Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.

The original edition did not include a Table of Contents. For the
convenience of the reader one has been created:

Presidential Addresses and State Papers 401

At Dedication of Navy Memorial Monument, San Francisco, Cal.,
May 14, 1903 401

At the University of California, Berkeley, Cal., May 14, 1903 404

At Banquet of the Union League Club of San Francisco, Cal.,
May 14, 1903 413

At Carson City, Nevada, May 19, 1903 414

From Address at the Laying of the Cornerstone of the Lewis and
Clark Memorial, Portland, Ore., May 21, 1903 419

Remarks in Accepting Souvenir Presented by the Workmen of the
Navy Yard, Bremerton, Wash., May 23, 1903 420

To the Arctic Brotherhood, Seattle, Wash., May 23, 1903 421

From Address at Everett, Wash., May 23, 1903 426

From Address at Seattle, Wash., May 23, 1903 428

At Spokane, Wash., May 26, 1903 429

From Address at Columbia Gardens, Butte, Mont., May 27, 1903 432

At the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 29, 1903 435

At Freeport, Ill., June 3, 1903 444

At the Lincoln Monument, Springfield, Ill., June 4, 1903 446

At the Consecration of Grace Memorial Reformed Church,
Washington, D. C., June 7, 1903 446

At the Saengerfest, Baltimore, Md., June 15, 1903 449

At the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.,
June 16, 1903 453

To the Holy Name Society at Oyster Bay, N. Y., August 16, 1903 458

On Board the _Kearsarge_, During the Review of the Fleet,
August 17, 1903 463

On Board the _Olympia_ During the Review of the Fleet,
August 17, 1903 465

At the State Fair, Syracuse, N. Y., September 7, 1903 466

At Richmond Hill, N. Y., September 8, 1903 481

At Antietam, Md., September 17, 1903 482

At the Unveiling of the Sherman Statue, Washington, D. C.,
October 15, 1903 489

At the Pan-american Missionary Service, Cathedral of St. Peter
and St. Paul, Mount St. Alban, Washington, D. C.,
October 25, 1903 495

At the Centennial Exercises in the N. Y. Avenue Presbyterian
Church, Washington, D. C., Nov. 16, 1903 501

Remarks to the Delegates of the German Societies Received at the
White House, Thursday, November 19, 1903 506

Correspondence, October 18, 1902 - To: Mrs. Van Vorst 508

Correspondence, November 26, 1902 - Re: Appointment of Dr. Crum 510

Correspondence, February 24, 1903 - To: Mr. Howell 514

Correspondence, July 13, 1903 - To: Secretary Cortelyou 518

Correspondence, July 14, 1903 - To: Mr. Cortelyou 520

Statement to American Federation of Labor, September 29, 1903 521

Correspondence, August 6, 1903 - To: Governor Durbin 523

Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress, at the Beginning of the First Session of
the Fifty-seventh Congress 529

Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Second Session of
the Fifty-seventh Congress 605

Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the First Session of
the Fifty-eighth Congress 644

Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Second Session of
the Fifty-eighth Congress 648

Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the
Two Houses of Congress on January 4, 1904 709

Extracts from the Messages of Theodore Roosevelt As Governor of
the State of New York 758

Message of the Governor of New York to the Legislature,
January 2, 1899 758

Message of the Governor of New York to the Legislature,
May 22, 1899 760

Message of the Governor of New York to the Legislature,
January 3, 1900 770

First Administration Index 789

_A photograph taken on the day when Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in
as Vice-President of the United States_]

Homeward Bound Edition

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS

_December 3, 1901, to January 4, 1904_

BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

[INDEX FIRST ADMINISTRATION]

PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

VOLUME II

NEW YORK
THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
MCMX

The Publishers desire to make clear to the readers that Ex-president Roosevelt
retains no pecuniary interest in the sale of the volumes containing these
speeches. He feels that the material contained in these addresses
has been dedicated to the public, and that it is, therefore,
not to be handled as copyrighted material from which
Mr. Roosevelt should receive any pecuniary return.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS

DECEMBER 3, 1901
TO
JANUARY 4, 1904

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

AT DEDICATION OF NAVY MEMORIAL MONUMENT, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., MAY 14, 1903

_Mr. Mayor; My Fellow-Citizens_:

The ground for this monument was first turned by President McKinley, and I am glad to have the chance of saying a few words in dedication of the completed monument. There is no branch of our government in which all our people are so deeply interested as the Navy of the United States. It is not merely San Francisco, not merely New York, or Boston, or Charleston, or New Orleans, not merely the seacoast cities of the Nation; every individual in the Nation who is proud of America and jealous of her good name must feel a thrill of generous emotion at the erection of a monument to the navy, a monument to the fleet which was victorious under Admiral Dewey on the first of May five years ago, a fleet which then added a new page to the long honor roll of American achievement. It is eminently fitting that there should be here in this great city on the Pacific Ocean a monument to commemorate the deed which showed once for all that America had taken her position on the Pacific. I want you all to draw a practical lesson from this commemoration. We to-day dedicate this monument because those who went before us had the wisdom to make ready for the victory. If we wish our children to have the chance of dedicating monuments of this kind in the event of war we must see that the navy is made ready in advance. To dedicate the monument would be an empty and foolish thing if we accompanied it by an abandonment of our national policy of building up the navy. And good though it is to erect this monument, it is better still to go on with the building up of the navy which gave the monument to us, and which, if we ever give it a fair chance, can be relied upon to rise level to our needs.

Remember that after the war has begun it is too late to improvise a navy. A naval war is two-thirds settled in advance, at least two-thirds, because it is mainly settled by the preparation which has gone on for years preceding its outbreak. We won at Manila because the shipbuilders of the country, including those here at San Francisco, under the wise provisions of Congress, had for fifteen years before been preparing the navy. In 1882 our navy was a shame and a disgrace to the country in point of material. The personnel contained as fine material as there was to be found in the world but the ships and the guns were antiquated, and it would have been a wicked absurdity to have sent them against the ships of any good power. Then we began to build up the navy. Every ship that fought under Dewey had been built between 1883 and 1896.

We come here as patriots remembering that our party lines stop at the water’s edge. That fleet was successful in 1898 because under the previous administrations of both political parties, under the previous Congresses controlled by both political parties, for the previous fifteen years there had been a resolute effort to build adequate ships. The ships that went in under Dewey had been constructed under different successive Secretaries of the Navy and had been provided for by different successive Congresses of the United States. Not one of them had been built less than two years, some of them fourteen years. We could not have begun to fight that battle if we had not been for so many years making ready the navy.

The last Congress has taken greater strides than any previous Congress in making ready the navy, but it will be two or three years before the effects are seen. In no branch of the government are foresight and the carrying out of a steady and continuous policy so necessary as in the navy; and you, citizens of San Francisco, of California, and all our citizens should make it a matter of prime duty to see that there is no halt in that work, that the next Congress, and the Congress after that, and the Congress after that, go right on providing formidable warcraft, providing officers, providing men, and providing the means of training them in peace to be effective in war. The best ships and the best guns do not count unless they are handled aright and aimed aright, and the best men can not thus handle the one nor aim the other if they do not have ample practice. Our people must be trained in handling our ships in squadrons on the high seas. Our people on the ships must be trained by actual practice to do their duty in conning tower, in the engine-rooms, in the gun-turrets. The shots that count in battle are the shots that hit.

We have reason to be satisfied with the rapid increase in accuracy in marksmanship of the navy in recent years, and I congratulate Admiral Glass and those under him and all our naval officers who are taking their part so well in perfecting that work, and I congratulate the enlisted men of the navy upon the extraordinary improvement in marksmanship shown by the gun pointers.

Applaud the navy and what it has done. That is first-class. But make your applause count by seeing that the good work goes on. Besides applauding now see to it that the navy is so built up that the men of the next generation will have something to applaud also.

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, CAL., MAY 14, 1903

_President Wheeler; Fellow-Members of the University_:

Last night, in speaking to one of my new friends in California, he told me that he thought enough had been said to me about the fruits and flowers; that enough had been said to me about California being an Eden, and that he wished I would pay some attention to Adam as well. Much though I have been interested in the wonderful physical beauty of this wonderful State, I have been infinitely more interested in its citizenship, and perhaps most in its citizenship in the making.

When I come to the University of California and am greeted by its President I am greeted by an old and valued friend, a friend whom I have not merely known socially but upon whom, while I was Governor of New York, I leaned often for advice and assistance in the problems with which I had to deal. When he accepted your offer I grudged him to you. And it was not until I came here, not until I have seen you, that I have been fully reconciled to the loss. But now I am, for I can conceive of no happier life for any man to lead to whom life means what it should mean, than the life of the President of this great University.

This same friend last night suggested to me a thought that I intend to work out in speaking to you to-day. We were talking over the University of California, and from that we spoke of the general educational system of our country. Facts tend to become commonplace, and we tend to lose sight of their importance when once they are ingrained into the life of the Nation. Although we talk a good deal about what the widespread education of this country means, I question if many of us deeply consider its meaning. From the lowest grade of the public school to the highest form of university training, education in this country is at the disposal of every man, every woman, who chooses to work for and obtain it. The State has done much, very much; witness this university. Private benefaction has done very much; witness also this university. And each one of us who has obtained an education has obtained something for which he or she has not personally paid. No matter what the school, what the university, every American who has a school training, a university training, has obtained something given to him outright by the State, or given to him by those dead or those living who were able to make provision for that training because of the protection of the State, because of existence within its borders. Each one of us then who has an education, school or college, has obtained something from the community at large for which he or she has not paid, and no self-respecting man or woman is content to rest permanently under such an obligation. Where the State has bestowed education the man who accepts it must be content to accept it merely as a charity unless he returns it to the State in full, in the shape of good citizenship. I do not ask of you, men and women here to-day, good citizenship as a favor to the State. I demand it of you as a right, and hold you recreant to your duty if you fail to give it.

Here you are in this university, in this State with its wonderful climate, which is permitting people of a northern stock for the first time in the history of that northern stock to gain education in physical surroundings somewhat akin to those which surrounded the early Greeks. Here you have all those advantages and you are not to be excused if you do not show in tangible fashion your appreciation of them and your power to give practical effect to that appreciation. From all our citizens we have a right to expect good citizenship; but most of all from those who have received most; most of all from those who have had the training of body, of mind, of soul, which comes from association in and with a great university. From those to whom much has been given we have Biblical authority to expect and demand much in return; and the most that can be given to any man is education. I expect and demand in the name of the Nation much more from you who have had training of the mind than from those of mere wealth. To the man of means much has been given, too, and much will be expected from him, and ought to be, but not as much as from you, because your possession is more valuable than his. If you envy him I think poorly of you. Envy is merely the meanest form of admiration, and a man who envies another admits thereby his own inferiority. We have a right to expect from the college bred man, the college bred woman, a proper sense of proportion, a proper sense of perspective, which will enable him or her to see things in their right relation one to another, and when thus seen while wealth will have a proper place, a just place, as an instrument for achieving happiness and power, for conferring happiness and power, it will not stand as high as much else in our national life. I ask you to take that not as a conventional statement from the university platform, but to test it by thinking of the men whom you admire in our past history and seeing what are the qualities which have made you admire them, what are the services they have rendered. For as President Wheeler said to-day, it is true now as it ever has been true that the greatest good fortune, the greatest honor, that can befall any man is that he shall serve, that he shall serve the Nation, serve his people, serve mankind; and looking back in history the names that come up before us, the names to which we turn, the names of the men of our own people which stand as shining honor marks in our annals, the names of those men typifying qualities which rightly we should hold in reverence, are the names of the statesmen, of the soldiers, of the poets—and after them, not abreast of them, the names of the architects of our material prosperity also.

Of recent years I have been thrown in contact with a number of college graduates doing good service to the country, and as I wish to make it perfectly evident what I mean by the kind of service which I should hope to have from you and which it seems to me worth while to render, I want to say just a word about two college graduates who have during the last five years rendered and are now rendering such services: Governor Taft in the Philippines, and Brigadier-General Leonard Wood, lately Governor of Cuba. When we acquired the Philippines and took possession for the time being of Cuba to train its people in citizenship, we assumed heavy responsibilities; so heavy that some very excellent persons thought we ought to shirk them. I hold that a great and masterful people forfeits its title to greatness if it shirks any work because that work is difficult and responsible. The difficulty and responsibility impose upon us the high duty of doing the work well, but they in no way excuse us for refusing to do it. We had to do the work and the question came of the choice of instruments in doing it. The most important and most difficult task after the establishment of order by the army in the Philippines was the establishment of civil government therein; and second only in importance to that came the administration of Cuba, during the three years and over that elapsed before we were able to turn its government over to its own people and start it as a free Republic. When tasks are all-important the most important factor in doing them right is the choice of the agents; and among the many debts of gratitude which this Nation owes to President McKinley, no debt is greater than the debt we owe him for the choice of his instruments, such a choice as that of Taft, such a choice as that of Wood. We sent Taft to the Philippines; we sent Wood to Cuba; both of them as tested by the standard of our commercial life, poor men; each man with little more than his salary to keep himself and his family; each man to handle millions upon millions of dollars, to have the power by mere conniving at what was improper to acquire untold wealth—and sent them knowing that we did not ever have to consider whether such opportunities would be temptations toward them; sent them knowing that they had the ideals of the true American and that, therefore, we did not have to consider the chance of such a temptation appealing to them.

Taft went to the Philippines to stay there; not only forfeiting thereby the certainty of brilliant rise in his profession on the bench or at the bar here if he had stayed, but at imminent risk to his own health; because he felt that his duty as an American made him go; that, as President McKinley told me of him, he had been drafted into the service of the country and he could not honorably refuse. We have seen in consequence the Philippine Islands administered by the American official who is at the head of the government and by his colleagues in the interest primarily of their people, and seeking to obtain for the United States, for the dominant race, that spent its blood and its treasure in making firm and stable the government of those islands, the reward that comes from the consciousness of duty well done. Under Taft, by and through his efforts, not only have peace and material well-being come to those islands to a degree never before known in their recorded history, and to a degree infinitely greater than had ever been dreamed possible by those who knew them best, but more than that, a greater measure of self-government has been given to them than is now given to any other Asiatic people under alien rule, than to any other Asiatic people under their own rulers, save Japan alone. That is an achievement of the past five years which I hold to be absolutely unparalleled in history; and when the debit and credit side of our national life is finally made up a long stroke shall be put to the credit side for what has been done in the Philippines under Taft and his associates.

In the same way Leonard Wood worked in Cuba. Put down there to do an absolutely new task, to take a people of a different race, a different speech, a different creed, a people just emerging from the hideous welter of a war, cruel and sanguinary beyond what we in this fortunate country can readily conceive, to take a people down in the depths of poverty and misery, just recovering from suffering which makes one shudder to think of, a people untrained utterly and absolutely in self-government, and fit them for it; and he did it. For three years he worked. He established a school system as good as the best that we have in any of our States. He cleaned cities which had never been cleaned in their existence before. He secured absolute safety for life and property. He did the kind of governmental work which should be the undying honor of our people forever. And he came home to what? He came home to be thanked by a few, to be attacked by others—not to their credit—and to have as his real reward the sense that though his work had been done at pecuniary sacrifice to him, that though the demands upon him had been such as to eat into his private means, yet he had worthily and well done his duty as an American citizen and reflected fresh honor upon the uniform of the United States Army.

I have chosen Taft and Wood simply as instances of what other men by the hundred have done, Americans who have graduated from no college, Americans who have graduated from our different colleges, and especially by practically all those Americans who have graduated from the two great typical American institutions of learning—West Point and Annapolis. Taft and Wood and their fellows are spending or have spent the best years of their prime in doing a work which means to them pecuniary loss, at the best a bare livelihood while they are doing it, and are doing it gladly because they realize the truth that the highest privilege that can be given to any American is the privilege of serving his country, his fellow-Americans. As I am speaking to an audience with proper ideals, when I say that Taft and Wood have done all this service to their pecuniary loss I am holding them up not for pity but for admiration. Every man, every woman here should feel it incumbent upon him or her to welcome with joy the chance to render service to the country, service to our people at large, and to accept the rendering of the service as in itself ample repayment therefor. Do not misunderstand me. The average man, the average woman must earn his or her living in one way or another, and I most emphatically do not advise any one to decline to do the humdrum, every-day duties because there may come a chance for the display of heroism. I ask of you the straightforward, earnest, performance of duty in all the little things that come up day by day in business, in domestic life, in every way, and then when the opportunity comes, if you have thus done your duty in the lesser things, I know you will rise level to the heroic needs.

AT BANQUET OF THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB OF SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., MAY 14, 1903

_Mr. Toastmaster, and you, my Fellow-Members of the Union League Club_:

No one can too strongly insist upon the elementary fact that you can not build the superstructure of public virtue save on private virtue. The sum of the parts is the whole, and if we wish to make that whole, the State, the representative and exponent and symbol of decency, it must be so made through the decency, public and private, of the average citizen.

It is absolutely essential if we are to have the proper standard of public life that promise shall be square with performance. A lie is no more to be excused in politics than out of politics. A promise is as binding on the stump as off the stump; and there are two facets to that crystal. In the first place, the man who makes a promise which he does not intend to keep and does not try to keep should rightly be adjudged to have forfeited in some degree what should be every man’s most precious possession—his honor. On the other hand, the public that exacts a promise which ought not to be kept, or which can not be kept, is by just so much forfeiting its right to self-government. There is no surer way of destroying the capacity for self-government in a people than to accustom that people to demanding the impossible or the improper from its public men. No man fit to be a public man will promise either the impossible or the improper; and if the demand is made that he shall do so it means putting a premium upon the unfit in public life. There is the same sound reason for distrusting the man who promises too much in public that there is for distrusting the man who promises too much in private business.

The one indispensable thing for us to keep is a high standard of character for the average American citizen.

AT CARSON CITY, NEVADA, MAY 19, 1903

_Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, and you, my Fellow-Citizens_:

It has been a great pleasure to be introduced in the more than kind words the Governor has used, because the Governor has been a genuine pioneer.

Here in this great Western country, the country which is what it is purely because the pioneers who came here had iron in their veins, because they were able to conquer plain and mountain, and to make the wilderness blossom, we are not to be excused if we do not see to it that the generation that comes after us is trained to have the sum of the fundamental qualities which enabled their fathers to succeed.

I want to say one special word to-day here in Carson City on a subject in which all of our people from the Atlantic to the Pacific take an interest, but which affects in especial the people of the States of the great plains and mountains and affects no State more than it does Nevada—the question of irrigation. Now, as I say, I do not regard that as in any way merely a question of the Rocky Mountain States, of the great plains States, because anything which tends for the well-being of any portion of the Union is therefore for the well-being of all of it, and it was for that reason that I felt warranted in appealing to the people of the seaboard States on the Atlantic, to the people of the States of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley, to say that it was their duty to help in bringing about a scheme of national irrigation, because the interest of any part of this country is the interest of all of it; and no man is a really good American who fails to grasp that fact.

The National Government is still, as you all well know, but as many Easterners do not know, the greatest land owner in the Western States, and among all those States Nevada holds the great proportion of vacant public land, and the need of Nevada for Federal assistance was one of the strongest arguments used in the discussion which preceded the reclamation act of June, 1902, the irrigation act of a year ago. The great extent of the vacant public lands in the State, the fact that its water supply came chiefly from streams rising in the adjoining State of California, and the overwhelming difficulties which for these and other reasons prevented the people of Nevada from efficiently acting in their own interest, made, in my judgment, and, as it proved, in the judgment of the Congress, Federal interference absolutely imperative. It is a matter for the strongest congratulation, not only for the West, but for the whole Nation, that the policy went into effect. It is a matter of special congratulation to Nevada that the Secretary of the Interior, guided in his choice wholly by actual conditions on the ground, has been led to undertake one of the five sets of works which have been first undertaken, here in Nevada, particularly near Reno on the Truckee River, as one of the national projects for the starting and working of the methods of the law. Extensive surveys have already been made, and the projects for water storage and water distribution are at a point which warrants our belief that immediate action is in sight. There are vast tracts of excellent land still in the ownership of the general government here in Nevada and elsewhere to which the reclamation act will bring the flood waters that now annually go to waste. For Nevada most of these waters originate in the high mountains lying in sight of Reno, largely just across the State line in California. Some of these mountains have been included in the forest reserves, and your interests and the interests of the irrigators in California imperatively demand the extension of the forest reserve system so that the source of supply for the great reservoirs and irrigation works may be safe from fire, from over-grazing, and from destructive lumbering. I ask you to pay attention to what I say when I use the word destructive lumbering; no one can desire to prevent, or do anything but help, practical and conservative lumbering. In other words, my fellow-citizens, we have reached a condition in which it must be the object of the Nation and the State to favor the development of the home-maker, of the man who takes up the land intending to keep it for himself and for his children, so that it shall be even of better use to them than to him.

The opportunities for the development of Nevada are very great. Until recently Nevada was only thought of as a mineral and stock-raising State. Much can be done yet as regards both the mineral exploitation and the raising of stock within the State; but now under the stimulus of irrigation it is probable that irrigated agriculture will come to the front, and when it does the population will increase with a rapidity and permanence never before known. The State of Nevada has led the way not only in the strength of its plea for national aid in irrigation, but also in its willingness to assist in the work. I wish to lay emphasis on the fact that in Nevada the authorities have been anxious in every way to help in working out the problem of irrigation; and to pay all acknowledgment to them now. The recent Legislature passed laws which in many respects should serve as models for the legislation of other States. The union of land and water under the national law has been recognized, and so has the fundamental proposition which necessarily underlies the prosperity of all communities in which irrigated agriculture is the chief industry, namely, that the water belongs to the people and can not be made a monopoly. The public appreciation of this fundamental truth that the water belongs to the people to be taken and put to beneficial use will wipe out many controversies which are at present so harmful to the development of the West. And the example of Nevada will be of material aid in bringing about this fortunate result.

As I said of the forests so it is even more true of the water supply. It should be our constant policy by national and by State legislation to see that the water is used for the benefit of the occupants of the soil, of those who till and use the soil, that it is not exploited by any one man or set of men in his or their interests as against the interests of those on the land who are to use it. It is a fundamental truth that the prosperity of any people is simply another term for the prosperity of the home-makers among that people. Our entire policy in irrigation, in forestry, in handling the public lands, should be in recognition of that truth, to favor in every way the man who wishes to take up a given area of soil and thereon to build a home in which he will rear his children as useful citizens of the State.

FROM ADDRESS AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNERSTONE OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK MEMORIAL, PORTLAND, ORE., MAY 21, 1903

_Mr. Mayor, and you, my Fellow-Citizens_:

We come here to-day to lay a cornerstone of a monument that is to call to mind the greatest single pioneering feat on this continent, the voyage across the continent by Lewis and Clark, which rounded out the ripe statesmanship of Jefferson and his fellows by giving to the United States all of the domain between the Mississippi and the Pacific. Following their advent came the reign of the fur trade; and then some sixty years ago those entered in whose children and children’s children were to possess the land. Across the continent in the early 40’s came the ox-drawn white-topped wagons bearing the pioneers, the stalwart, sturdy, sunburned men, with their wives and their little ones, who entered into this country to possess it. You have built up here this wonderful commonwealth, a commonwealth great in its past, and infinitely greater in its future.

It was a pleasure to me to-day to have as part of my escort the men of the Second Oregon, who carried on the expansion of our people beyond the Pacific as your fathers had carried it on to the Pacific. Speaking to you here I do not have to ask you to face the future high of heart and confident of soul. You could not assume any other attitude and be true to your blood, true to the position in which you find yourselves on this continent. I speak to the men of the Pacific Slope, to the men whose predecessors gave us this region because they were not afraid, because they did not seek the life of ease and safety, because their life training was not to shrink from obstacles but to meet and overcome them; and now I ask that this Nation go forward as it has gone forward in the past; I ask that it shape its life in accordance with the highest ideals; I ask that our name be a synonym for truthful and fair dealing with all the nations of the world; and I ask two things in connection with our foreign policy—that we never wrong the weak and that we never flinch from the strong. Base is the man who inflicts a wrong, and base is the man who suffers a wrong to be done him.

We have met to commemorate a mighty pioneer feat, a feat of the old days, when men needed to call upon every ounce of courage and hardihood and manliness they possessed in order to make good our claim to this continent. Let us in our turn with equal courage, equal hardihood and manliness, carry on the task that our forefathers have intrusted to our hands; and let us resolve that we shall leave to our children and our children’s children an even mightier heritage than we received in our turn.

REMARKS IN ACCEPTING SOUVENIR PRESENTED BY THE WORKMEN OF THE NAVY YARD, BREMERTON, WASH., MAY 23, 1903

I want to thank you and through you your fellow workmen for this token. I also wish to repeat what I have said before, that the victories of Manila and Santiago reflect credit not merely upon those who fought, but upon every man who did his work in preparing the ships for battle. There is not a workman in any of our yards who did his duty in connection with the guns, the armor plate, the turrets, the hulls, or anything, who has not his full right to a share in the credit of those victories. You all did your part in winning them just as much as the men who actually fought. Nothing could have pleased me more than to have received this gift from the men of the yard, and I appreciate it.

TO THE ARCTIC BROTHERHOOD, SEATTLE, WASH., MAY 23, 1903

_Mr. Chairman, and you, Men and Women of Alaska_:

Let me thank you and the members of the Arctic Brotherhood for their greeting. I am happy to say that during the last year or two the National Legislature has begun to realize its responsibilities in reference to Alaska; and that even those of our people who do not live on the Pacific Slope are beginning to understand that in the not distant future Alaska will be not merely a regularly organized Territory, but a great and populous State.

Very few European races have exercised a more profound influence upon Europe, and none has had a more heroic history, than the race occupying the Scandinavian peninsula of the Old World. And Alaska lies in the same latitude as, and can and will in the lifetime of those I am addressing support as great a population as, the Scandinavian peninsula. It is curious how our fate as a Nation has often driven us forward toward greatness in spite of the protests of many of those esteeming themselves in point of training and culture best fitted to shape the Nation’s destiny. In 1803, when we acquired the territory stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, there were plenty of wise men who announced that we were acquiring a mere desert, that it was a violation of the Constitution to acquire it, and that the acquisition was fraught with the seeds of the dissolution of the Republic. And think how absolutely the event has falsified the predictions of those men. So when in the late 60’s we by treaty acquired Alaska, this great territory with its infinite possibilities was taken by this Republic in spite of the bitter opposition of many men who were patriots according to their lights and who esteemed themselves far-sighted. And but five years ago there were excellent men who bemoaned the fact that we were obliged during the war with Spain to take possession of the Philippines and to show that we were hereafter to be one of the dominant powers of the Pacific. In every instance how the after events of history have falsified the predictions of the men of little faith! There are critics so feeble and so timid that they shrink back when this Nation asserts that it comes in the category of the nations who dare to be great, and they want to know, forsooth, the cost of greatness and what it means. We do not know the cost, but we know it will be more than repaid ten times over by the result; and what it may ultimately mean we do not know, but we know what the present holds, what the present need demands, and we take the present and hold ourselves ready to abide the result of whatever the future may bring.

When I speak to you of the Pacific Slope, to you of the new Northwest, whose cities are seated here by the Sound, I speak to people abounding in their youth and their virile manhood, who do not fear to grasp opportunity as the opportunity comes, and who weigh slight risk but lightly in the balance when on the other side of the scale comes the greatness of triumph, the greatness of acquisition. We took Alaska thirty-five years ago, and at last we have begun to wake up to the heritage that thereby we have handed over to our children. I speak to you, citizens of Alaska, people who have dwelt therein, to say how much all our people owe to you. During the last year many wise laws have been put upon the statute book in reference to Alaska; not as many as should have been put, but a good many. I earnestly hope that Congress will speedily provide for a delegate from Alaska, so that the people of the Territory may have some recognized exponent whose duty it shall be to place its needs before the National Legislature. Meanwhile, with the assistance of the Senators and Representatives in Congress from this section of the country, I shall do all that in me lies to see that the proper kinds of legislation are enacted for the Territory.

The immediate cause of the great development of Alaska of course is to be found in its mines; but most of the people of this country are wholly in error when they think of the mines as being the sole or even the chief permanent cause of Alaska’s future greatness. Alaska has great possibilities of agricultural and pastoral development. Not only her mines, her fisheries, her forests, but her agriculture and her stock-raising will combine to make Alaska one of the great wealth-producing portions of our Republic. I am anxious that our laws should be framed in the interest of those who intend to go there and stay there and bring up their children there and make it in very fact as well as in name an integral part of this Republic. I ask your help and pledge you my help in the effort to secure such legislation. In the case of the mine you get the metal out of the earth, you can not leave any metal in there to produce other metal; but in the case of the salmon fishery, if you are wise you will insist upon its being carried on under conditions which will make the salmon fishery as valuable in that river thirty years hence as now. Do not take all the salmon out and go away and leave the empty river for your children and children’s children; take it out under conditions—the conditions are ready to be created for you by the National Fish Commission, which has been so singularly successful in its work—which will secure the preservation of that river as a salmon river, which will secure the perpetuation of salmon canneries along its banks, so that it will be not an industry carried on only by Orientals in the employ of three or four alien capitalists, but carried on in such a way as to be a perpetual source of income to the actual settlers resident in the locality. Just in the same way I want to have you see that the lumber industry is exploited in a way which, while giving a great return to those engaged in it at the moment, shall also secure the preservation of the forests for the settlers and the settlers’ children that are to come in and inherit the land. I wish to see such land laws enacted and to see them so administered as to be in the interest of the actual settler who goes to Alaska to live, who desires there to produce crops, to raise stock, to make a home for himself; subject to that condition I desire to see legislation shaped in the spirit of the broadest liberality that will secure the quickest possible development of the resources of Alaska; and with that aim in view to have all the encouragement possible given to those seeking to establish by steamship line and by railway quick and efficient transportation facilities in the Territory.

Few things have been more typical of our people and have been more full of promise for the future than the way in which the resources have been developed; and when one sees what has been done here during the last few years I think we have cause to feel abundantly justified in our belief that the qualities of the old-time pioneers who first penetrated the woody wilderness between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, who then steered their way across vast seas of grass from the Mississippi to the Rockies, who penetrated the passes of the great barren mountains until they came to this, the greatest of all the oceans, still survive in their grandsons and successors. Nor must we forget in speaking of Alaska the immense importance that the Territory has from the standpoint of the needs of the Nation as a whole, as a dominant power in the Pacific. Exactly as with the building of the Isthmian Canal we shall make our Atlantic and our Pacific coasts in effect continuous, so the possession and peopling of the Alaskan seacoast puts us in a position of dominance as regards the Pacific which no other nations share or can share.

FROM ADDRESS AT EVERETT, WASH., MAY 23, 1903

There are few problems which so especially concern Washington, Oregon, and California as the problem of forestry. Nothing has been of better augury for the welfare and prosperity of these great States as well as for the other forest States than the way in which those actively engaged in the lumbering business have come of recent years to work hand in hand with those who have made forestry a study in the effort to preserve the forests. The whole question is a business, an economic question; an economic question for the Nation, a business question for the individual. East of your great mountain chains the question of water supply becomes vital and becomes inseparable from that of forestry. Here that question does not enter in. The lumbering interest is the fourth great business interest in point of importance in the United States. There is engaged in it a capital of over six hundred millions of dollars, and every year the wage-workers in that industry receive one hundred millions of dollars. Such an industry so vitally connected with many others in the country can not with wisdom be neglected, the interests depending upon it are too vast. I do not have to say here in Washington that fire is a great enemy of the forests. Here in Washington it is probable that fire has destroyed more than the axe during the decade in which the axe has been at work.

Our aim should be to get the fullest use from the forest to-day, and yet to get that benefit in ways which will keep the forests for our children in the generations to come; so that, for instance, the country adjoining Puget Sound shall have the lumbering industry as a permanent industry. Recently the trade journals of that industry have been dwelling upon the fact that its very existence is actually at stake, and nowhere in the whole country can the question of forestry be handled better than in this region, because nowhere else is it so easy to produce a second crop. You are fortunate in having such climatic conditions, such conditions of soil, that here more than anywhere else the forest renews itself quickly, so as in a comparatively short number of years to be again a great mercantile and industrial asset. The preservation of our forests depends chiefly upon the wisdom with which the practical lumberman, the practical expert in dealing with the lumber industry, works with the men who have studied forestry under all conditions. I am glad indeed that such co-operation is more and more being accepted as a matter of course by both sides.

FROM ADDRESS AT SEATTLE, WASH., MAY 23, 1903

There is no other body of water in the world which confers upon the commonwealth possessing it quite the natural advantages that Puget Sound confers upon your State. There is no other State in the Union, and I include all of them, which has greater natural advantages and a more assured future of greatness than this State of Washington. Phenomenal though your growth has been, it has barely begun; and your growth in the half century now opening will dwarf absolutely even your growth in the immediate past.

I am speaking in the gateway to Alaska. All our people, even those from the locality whence I come, are beginning to appreciate a little of Alaska’s future. The men of my own age whom I am addressing will not be old men before we see Alaska one of the rich and strong States of the Union. I thank fortune that the National Legislature has begun to wake up to the fact that Alaska has interests of vital importance not merely to her but to the entire Union. Alaska contains a territory which will within this century support as large a population as the combined Scandinavian countries of Europe; those countries from which has sprung as wonderful a race as ever imprinted its characteristics upon the history of civilization. Exactly as the Scandinavian peoples have left their mark upon the entire history of Europe, so we shall see Alaska with its mines, its lumber, its fisheries, with its possibilities in agriculture and stock-raising, with its possibilities of commercial command, with the tremendous development that is going on within it even now, produce as hardy and vigorous a people as any portion of North America.

AT SPOKANE, WASH., MAY 26, 1903

_Senator Turner, and you, my Fellow-Americans_:

I am in a city at the eastern gateway of this State with the great railroad systems of the State running through it. On the western edge of this State in Puget Sound I have seen the homing places of the great steamship lines, which, in connection with these great railroads, are doing so much to develop the Oriental trade of this country and this State. Washington will owe no small part of its future greatness, and that greatness will be great indeed, to the fact that it is thus doing its share in acquiring for the United States the dominance of the Pacific. Those railroads, the men and the corporations that have built them, have rendered a very great service to the community. The men who are building, the corporations which are building the great steamship lines have likewise rendered a very great service to the community. Every man who has made wealth or used it in developing great legitimate business enterprises has been of benefit and not harm to the country at large. This city has grown by leaps and bounds only when the railroads came to it, when the railroads came to the State; and if the State were now cut off from its connection by rail and by steamship with the rest of the world its position would of course diminish incalculably. Great good has come from the development of our railroad system; great good has been done by the individuals and corporations that have made that development possible; and in return good is done to them, and not harm, when they are required to obey the law. Ours is a government of liberty by, through and under the law. No man is above it and no man is below it. The crime of cunning, the crime of greed, the crime of violence, are all equally crimes, and against them all alike the law must set its face. This is not and never shall be a government either of a plutocracy or of a mob. It is, it has been, and it will be, a government of the people; including alike the people of great wealth and of moderate wealth, the people who employ others, the people who are employed, the wage-worker, the lawyer, the mechanic, the banker, the farmer; including them all, protecting each and every one if he acts decently and squarely, and discriminating against any one of them, no matter from what class he comes, if he does not act squarely and fairly, if he does not obey the law. While all people are foolish if they violate or rail against the law—wicked as well as foolish, but all foolish—yet the most foolish man in this Republic is the man of wealth who complains because the law is administered with impartial justice against or for him. His folly is greater than the folly of any other man who so complains; for he lives and moves and has his being because the law does in fact protect him and his property.