Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Finally, in the quotation from the Collect, we ask that we may be made ready both in body and in soul, that we may cheerfully accomplish those things that we are commanded to do. Ready both in body and in soul; that means that we must fit ourselves physically and mentally, fit ourselves to work with the weapons necessary for dealing with this life no less than with the higher, spiritual weapons; fit ourselves thus to do the work commanded; and moreover, to do it cheerfully. Small is our use for the man who individually helps any of us and shows that he does it grudgingly. We had rather not be helped than be helped in such fashion. A favor extended in a manner which shows that the man is sorry that he has to grant it is robbed, sometimes of all, and sometimes of more than all, its benefit. So, in serving the Lord, if we serve him, if we serve the cause of decency, the cause of righteousness, in a way that impresses others with the fact that we are sad in doing it, our service is robbed of an immense proportion of its efficacy. We have a right to ask a cheerful heart, a right to ask a buoyant and cheerful spirit among those to whom is granted the inestimable privilege of doing the Lord’s work in this world. The chance to do work, the duty to do work is not a penalty; it is a privilege. Let me quote a sentence that I have quoted once before: “In this life the man who wins to any goal worth winning almost always comes to that goal with a burden bound on his shoulders.” The man who does best in this world, the woman who does best, almost inevitably does it because he or she carries some burden. Life is so constituted that the man or the woman who has not some responsibility is thereby deprived of the deepest happiness that can come to mankind, because each and every one of us, if he or she is fit to live in the world must be conscious that responsibility always rests on him or on her—the responsibility of duty toward those dependent upon us; the responsibility of duty toward our families, toward our friends, toward our fellow-citizens; the responsibility of duty to wife and child, to the state, to the church. Not only can no man shirk some or all of those responsibilities, but no man worth his salt will wish to shirk them. On the contrary, he will welcome thrice over the fortune that puts them upon him.

In closing, I want to call your attention to something that is especially my business for the time being, and that is measurably your business all the time, or else you are unfit to be citizens of this Republic. In the seventh hymn which we sung, in the last line, you all joined in singing “God save the State!” Do you intend merely to sing that, or to try to do it? If you intend merely to sing it, your part in doing it will be but small. The State will be saved, if the Lord puts it into the heart of the average man so to shape his life that the State shall be worth saving, and only on those terms. We need civic righteousness. The best constitution that the wit of man has ever devised, the best institutions that the ablest statesmen in the world have ever reduced to practice by law or by custom, all these shall be of no avail if they are not vivified by the spirit which makes a State great by making its citizens honest, just, and brave. I do not ask you as practical believers in applied Christianity to take part one way or the other in matters that are merely partisan. There are plenty of questions about which honest men can and do differ very greatly and very intensely, but as to which the triumph of either side may be compatible with the welfare of the State—a lesser degree of welfare or a greater degree of welfare—but compatible with the welfare of the State. But there are certain great principles, such as those which Cromwell would have called “fundamentals,” concerning which no man has a right to have more than one opinion. Such a question is honesty. If you have not honesty in the average private citizen, in the average public servant, then all else goes for nothing. The abler a man is, the more dexterous, the shrewder, the bolder, why the more dangerous he is if he has not the root of right living and right thinking in him—and that in private life, and even more in public life. Exactly as in time of war, although you need in each fighting man far more than courage, yet all else counts for nothing if there is not that courage upon which to base it, so in our civil life, although we need that the average man in private life, that the average public servant, shall have far more than honesty, yet all other qualities go for nothing or for worse than nothing unless honesty underlies them—honesty in public life and honesty in private life; not only the honesty that keeps its skirts technically clear, but the honesty that is such according to the spirit as well as the letter of the law; the honesty that is aggressive, the honesty that not merely deplores corruption—it is easy enough to deplore corruption—but that wars against it and tramples it under foot. I ask for that type of honesty, I ask for militant honesty, for the honesty of the kind that makes those who have it discontented with themselves as long as they have failed to do everything that in them lies to stamp out dishonesty wherever it can be found, in high place or in low. And let us not flatter ourselves, we who live in countries where the people rule that it is ultimately possible for the people to cast upon any but themselves the responsibilities for the shape the government and the social and political life of the community assumes. I ask then that our people feel quickened within them burning indignation against wrong in every shape, and condemnation of that wrong, whether found in private or in public life. We have a right to demand courage of every man who wears the uniform; it is not so much a credit to him to have it as it is shame unutterable to him if he lacks it. So when we demand honesty, we demand it not as entitling the possessor to praise, but as warranting the heartiest condemnation possible if he lacks it. Surely in every movement for the betterment of our life, our life social in the truest and deepest sense, our life political, we have a special right to ask not merely support but leadership from those of the Church. We ask that you here to whom much has been given will remember that from you rightly much will be expected in return. For all of us here the lines have been cast in pleasant places. Each of us has been given one talent, or five, or ten talents, and each of us is in honor bound to use that talent or those talents aright, and to show at the end that he is entitled to the praise of having done well as a faithful servant.

I greet you this afternoon, and am glad to see you here, and I trust and believe that after this service every one of us will go home feeling that he or she has been warranted in coming here by the way in which he or she, after going home, takes up with fresh heart, with fresh courage, and with fresh and higher purpose the burden of life as that burden has been given to him or to her to carry.

AT THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES IN THE N. Y. AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C., NOV. 16, 1903

_Mr. Justice_:

Let me first express the appreciation that all of us feel to Professor McMaster for his exceedingly interesting address; and the address showed why he can justly claim to be the historian of the people of the United States, for what he has told us was what the people did, not merely what the outward forms and observances were, but what the life of the people was a century ago. And, Mr. Justice, I think that the recital has left in the minds of all of us the feeling that while we revere our ancestors, we are not wholly discontented that we live in the present day.

To each generation comes its allotted task; and no generation is to be excused for failure to perform that task. No generation can claim as an excuse for such failure the fact that it is not guilty of the sins of the preceding generation. It was a surprise to me, I suppose it was a surprise to many of us, to realize that a hundred years ago, in the days of the fathers, the lot of the poor debtor was so hard. It seems incredible to us now that there should have been such callousness to the undeserved human suffering then. I hope sincerely that a century hence it will seem equally incredible to the American of that generation that there should be corruption and venality in public life. We can divide, and must divide, on party lines as regards certain questions; as regards the deepest, as regards the vital questions, we can not afford to divide, and I have the right to challenge the best effort of every American worthy of the name to putting down by every means in his power corruption in private life, and above all corruption in public life. And, remember, you, the people of this government by the people, that while the public servant, the legislator, the executive officer, the judge, are not to be excused if they fall short of their duty, yet that their doing their duty can not avail unless you do yours. In the last resort we have to depend upon the jury drawn from the people to convict the scoundrel who has tainted our public life; and unless that jury does its duty, unless it is backed by the public sentiment of the people, all the work of legislator, of executive officer, of judicial officer, are for naught.

Mr. Justice, a man would be a poor citizen of this country if he could sit in Abraham Lincoln’s pew and not feel the solemn sense of the associations borne in upon him; and I wish to thank the people of this church for that reverence for the historic past, for the sense of historic continuity, which has made them keep this pew unchanged. I hope it will remain unchanged in this church as long as our country endures. We have not too many monuments of the past; let us keep every little bit of association with that which is highest and best of the past as a reminder to us, equally of what we owe to those who have gone before and of how we should show our appreciation. This evening I sit in this pew of Abraham Lincoln’s, together with Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary, who, for my good fortune, now serves as Secretary of State in my Cabinet.

If ever there lived a President who during his term of service needed all of the consolation and of the strength that he could draw from the unseen powers above him, it was Abraham Lincoln, who worked and suffered for the people, and when he had lived for them to good end gave his life at the end. If ever there was a man who practically applied what was taught in our churches, it was Abraham Lincoln. The other day I was rereading—on the suggestion of Mr. Hay—a little speech not often quoted of his, yet which seems to me one of the most remarkable that he ever made; delivered right after his re-election, I think, to a body of serenaders who had come, if my memory is correct, from Maryland, and called for an address from him from the White House. It is extraordinary to read that speech, and to realize that the man who made it had just come successfully through a great political contest in which he felt that so much was at stake for the Nation that he had no time to think whether or not anything was at stake for himself. The speech is devoid of the least shade of bitterness. There is not a word of unseemly triumph over those who have been defeated. There is not a word of glorification of himself, or in any improper sense of his party. There is an earnest appeal, now that the election is over, now that the civic strife has been completed, for all decent men who love the country to join together in service to the country; and in the speech he uses a thoroughly Lincoln-like phrase when he says “I have not willingly planted a thorn in the breast of any man,” thus trying to make clear that he has nothing to say against any opponent, no bitterness toward any opponent; that all he wishes is that those who opposed him should join with those who favored him in working toward a common end. In reading his works and addresses, one is struck by the fact that as he went higher and higher all personal bitterness seemed to die out of him. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates one can still catch now and then a note of personal antagonism; the man was in the arena, and as the blows were given and taken you can see that now and then he had a feeling against his antagonist. When he became President and faced the crisis that he had to face, from that time on I do not think that you can find an expression, a speech, a word of Lincoln’s, written or spoken, in which bitterness is shown to any man. His devotion to the cause was so great that he neither could nor would have feeling against any individual.

In closing, Mr. Justice, in thanking you of this church, the church so closely kindred to my own Dutch Reformed Church, in thanking you for asking me here, let me say how peculiarly glad I am that in the chair sits one man, a Justice of the Supreme Court, and that I could be escorted here by another man, who has just severed his connection with one of the highest places in the United States Army, both of whom—you, Justice Harlan, you, General Breckinridge—had enjoyed the wonderful privilege of proving by their deeds the faith that was in them in the days that tried men’s souls; both of whom did their part in holding up the hands of mighty Lincoln, and both of whom were born in the State of Lincoln’s birth.

REMARKS TO THE DELEGATES OF THE GERMAN SOCIETIES RECEIVED AT THE WHITE HOUSE, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1903

_Mr. Voelckner, and Gentlemen_:

It gives me peculiar pleasure to greet you to-day; and it is a matter of real regret to me that I can not attend formally your celebration.

You are quite right, Mr. Chairman, when you speak of the stand that the German element in our citizenship has always taken in all crises of our national life. In the first place, from the beginning of our colonial history to this day, the German strain has been constantly increasing in importance among the many strains that go to make up our composite national character. I do not have to repeat to you the story of the early German immigration to this country—the German immigration that began in a mass toward the end of the seventeenth century, but before that time had been represented among the very first settlers. Allow me to give you one bit of ancestral experience of mine. The first head of the New York City Government who was of German birth was Leisler, about the year 1680. He was the representative of the popular faction in the New York colony of that day, and among the Leislerian aldermen was a forbear of mine named Roosevelt. You are entirely familiar, of course, with the German immigration that went to the formation of Pennsylvania from the beginning. That element was equally strong in the Mohawk Valley in New York; it was equally strong in Middle and Western Maryland. For instance, in the Revolutionary War, one of the distinguished figures contributed by New York to the cause of independence was that of the German Herkimer, whose fight in the Mohawk Valley represented one of the turning points in the struggle for independence; and one of the New York counties is now named after him. The other day I went out to the battlefield of Antietam, here in Maryland. There the Memorial Church is the German Lutheran Church, which was founded in 1768, the settlement in the neighborhood of Antietam being originally exclusively a German settlement. There is a list of its pastors, and curiously enough a series of memorial windows of men with German names—men who belonged to the Maryland regiment recruited largely from that region for the Civil War, which Maryland regiment was mainly composed of men of German extraction. In the Civil War it would be difficult to paint in too strong colors what I may wellnigh call the all-importance of the attitude of the American citizens of German birth and extraction toward the cause of Union and Liberty, especially in what were then known as the border States. It would have been out of the question to have kept Missouri loyal had it not been for the German element therein. It was the German portion of the city of St. Louis which formed the core of the Union cause in Missouri. And but little less important was the part played by the Germans in Maryland, and also in Louisville and other portions of Kentucky.

Each body of immigrants, each element that has thus been added to our national strain, has contributed something of value to the national character; and to no element do we owe more than we owe to that element represented by those whom I have the honor this day of addressing.

WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON,
_October 18, 1902_

MY DEAR MRS. VAN VORST:

I must write you a line to say how much I have appreciated your article, “The Woman who Toils.” But to me there is a most melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is fundamentally infinitely more important than any other question in this country—that is, the question of race suicide, complete or partial.

An easy, good-natured kindliness, and a desire to be “independent,” that is, to live one’s life purely according to one’s own desires, are in no sense substitutes for the fundamental virtues, for the practice of the strong racial qualities without which there can be no strong races—the qualities of courage and resolution in both men and women, of scorn of what is mean, base, and selfish, of eager desire to work or fight or suffer as the case may be, provided the end to be gained is great enough, and the contemptuous putting aside of mere ease, mere vapid pleasure, mere avoidance of toil and worry. I do not know whether I most pity or despise the foolish and selfish man or woman who does not understand that the only things really worth having in life are those the acquirement of which normally means cost and effort. If a man or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout life denied those highest of all joys which spring only from home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy; the sympathy one extends to the gallant fellow killed at the beginning of a campaign, or the man who toils hard and is brought to ruin by the fault of others. But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the race and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people.

Of course no one quality makes a good citizen, and no one quality will save a nation. But there are certain great qualities for the lack of which no amount of intellectual brilliancy or of material prosperity or of easiness of life can atone, and which show decadence and corruption in the nation, just as much if they are produced by selfishness and coldness and ease-loving laziness among comparatively poor people as if they are produced by vicious or frivolous luxury in the rich. If the men of the nation are not anxious to work in many different ways, with all their might and strength, and ready and able to fight at need, and anxious to be fathers of families, and if the women do not recognize that the greatest thing for any woman is to be a good wife and mother, why, that nation has cause to be alarmed about its future.

There is no physical trouble among us Americans. The trouble with the situation you set forth is one of character, and therefore we can conquer it if we only will.

Very sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT

MRS. BESSIE VAN VORST,
Philadelphia, Pa.

_Personal._
WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON,
_November 26, 1902_

MY DEAR SIR:

I am in receipt of your letter of November 10 and of one from Mr. —— under date of November 11, in reference to the appointment of Dr. Crum as collector of the Port of Charleston.

In your letter you make certain specific charges against Dr. Crum, tending to show his unfitness in several respects for the office sought. These charges are entitled to the utmost consideration from me and I shall go over them carefully before taking any action. After making these charges you add, as a further reason for opposition to him, that he is a colored man, and after reciting the misdeeds that followed carpet-bag rule and negro domination in South Carolina, you say that “we have sworn never again to submit to the rule of the African, and such an appointment as that of Dr. Crum to any such office forces us to protest unanimously against this insult to the white blood”; and you add that you understood me to say that I would never force a negro on such a community as yours. Mr. —— puts the objection of color first, saying: “First, he is a colored man, and that of itself ought to bar him from the office.” In view of these last statements, I think I ought to make clear to you why I am concerned and pained by your making them and what my attitude is as regards all such appointments. How any one could have gained the idea that I had said I would not appoint reputable and upright colored men to office, when objection was made to them solely on account of their color, I confess I am wholly unable to understand. At the time of my visit to Charleston last spring, I had made, and since that time I have made, a number of such appointments from several States in which there is a considerable colored population. For example, I made one such appointment in Mississippi, and another in Alabama, shortly before my visit to Charleston. I had at that time appointed two colored men as judicial magistrates in the District of Columbia. I have recently announced another such appointment for New Orleans, and have just made one from Pennsylvania. The great majority of my appointments in every State have been of white men. North and South alike it has been my sedulous endeavor to appoint only men of high character and good capacity, whether white or black. But it has been my consistent policy in every State where their numbers warranted it to recognize colored men of good repute and standing in making appointments to office. These appointments of colored men have in no State made more than a small proportion of the total number of appointments. I am unable to see how I can legitimately be asked to make an exception for South Carolina. In South Carolina, to the four most important positions in the State I have appointed three men and continued in office a fourth, all of them white men—three of them originally Gold Democrats—two of them, as I am informed, the sons of Confederate soldiers. I have been informed by the citizens of Charleston whom I have met that these four men represent a high grade of public service.

I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. So far as I legitimately can I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each locality; but I can not consent to take the position that the door of hope—the door of opportunity—is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong. If, as you hold, the great bulk of the colored people are not yet fit in point of character and influence to hold such positions, it seems to me that it is worth while putting a premium upon the effort among them to achieve the character and standing which will fit them.

The question of “negro domination” does not enter into the matter at all. It might as well be asserted that when I was Governor of New York I sought to bring about negro domination in that State because I appointed two colored men of good character and standing to responsible positions—one of them to a position paying a salary twice as large as that paid in the office now under consideration—one of them as a director of the Buffalo exposition. The question raised by you and Mr. —— in the statements to which I refer, is simply whether it is to be declared that under no circumstances shall any man of color, no matter how upright and honest, no matter how good a citizen, no matter how fair in his dealings with his fellows, be permitted to hold any office under our government. I certainly can not assume such an attitude, and you must permit me to say that in my view it is an attitude no man should assume, whether he looks at it from the standpoint of the true interest of the white men of the South or of the colored men of the South—not to speak of any other section of the Union. It seems to me that it is a good thing from every standpoint to let the colored man know that if he shows in marked degree the qualities of good citizenship—the qualities which in a white man we feel are entitled to reward—then he will not be cut off from all hope of similar reward.

Without any regard to what my decision may be on the merits of this particular applicant for this particular place, I feel that I ought to let you know clearly my attitude on the far broader question raised by you and Mr. ——; an attitude from which I have not varied during my term of office.

Faithfully yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

HON. ——

Charleston, S. C.

WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON,
_February 24, 1903_

MY DEAR MR. HOWELL:

I have a high opinion of the gentleman you mention and if the opportunity occurs I shall be glad to do anything I can for him.

Now as to what you say concerning Federal appointments in the South. Frankly, it seems to me that my appointments speak for themselves and that my policy is self-explanatory. So far from feeling that they need the slightest apology or justification, my position is that on the strength of what I have done I have the right to claim the support of all good citizens who wish not only a high standard of Federal service but fair and equitable dealing to the South as well as to the North, and a policy of consistent justice and good-will toward all men. In making appointments I have sought to consider the feelings of the people of each locality so far as I could consistently do so without sacrificing principle. The prime tests I have applied have been those of character, fitness and ability, and when I have been dissatisfied with what has been offered within my own party lines I have without hesitation gone to the opposite party—and you are of course aware that I have repeatedly done this in your own State of Georgia. I certainly can not treat mere color as a permanent bar to holding office, any more than I could so treat creed or birthplace—always provided that in other respects the applicant or incumbent is a worthy and well-behaved American citizen. Just as little will I treat it as conferring a right to hold office. I have scant sympathy with the mere doctrinaire, with the man of mere theory who refuses to face facts; but do you not think that in the long run it is safer for everybody if we act on the motto “All men up,” rather than that of “Some men down”?

I ask you to judge not by what I say but by what during the last seventeen months I have actually done. In your own State of Georgia you are competent to judge from your own experience. In the great bulk of the cases I have reappointed President McKinley’s appointees. The changes I have made, such as that in the postmastership at Athens and in the surveyorship at Atlanta, were, as I think you will agree, changes for the better and not for the worse. It happens that in each of these offices I have appointed a white man to succeed a colored man. In South Carolina I have similarly appointed a white postmaster to succeed a colored postmaster. Again, in South Carolina I have nominated a colored man to fill a vacancy in the position of collector of the port of Charleston, just as in Georgia I have reappointed the colored man who is now serving as collector of the port of Savannah. Both are fit men. Why the appointment of one should cause any more excitement than the appointment of the other, I am wholly at a loss to imagine. As I am writing to a man of keen and trained intelligence I need hardly say that to connect either of these appointments, or any or all of my other appointments, or my actions in upholding the law at Indianola, with such questions as “social equality” and “negro domination” is as absurd as to connect them with the nebular hypothesis or the theory of atoms.

I have consulted freely with your own Senators and Congressmen as to the character and capacity of any appointee in Georgia concerning whom there was question. My party advisers in the State have been Major Hanson of Macon, Mr. Walter Johnson of Atlanta—both of them ex-Confederate soldiers—and Mr. Harry Stillwell Edwards, also of Macon. I believe you will agree with me that in no State would it be possible to find gentlemen abler and more upright or better qualified to fill the positions they have filled with reference to me. In every instance where these gentlemen have united in making a recommendation I have been able to follow their advice. Am I not right in saying that the Federal office-holders whom I have appointed throughout your State are, as a body, men and women of a high order of efficiency and integrity? If you know of any Federal office-holder in Georgia of whom this is not true pray let me know at once. I will welcome testimony from you or from any other reputable citizen which will tend to show that a given public officer is unworthy; and, most emphatically, short will be the shrift of any one whose lack of worth is proven. Incidentally I may mention that a large percentage of the incumbents of Federal offices in Georgia under me are, as I understand it, of your own political faith. But they are supported by me in every way as long as they continue to render good and faithful service to the public.

This is true of your own State; and by applying to Mr. Thomas Nelson Page of Virginia, to General Basil Duke of Kentucky, to Mr. George Crawford of Tennessee, to Mr. John McIlhenny of Louisiana, to Judge Jones of Alabama, and Mr. Edgar L. Wilson of Mississippi, all of them Democrats and all of them men of the highest standing in their respective communities, you will find that what I have done in Georgia stands not as the exception but as the rule for what I have done throughout the South. I have good reason to believe that my appointees in the different States mentioned—and as the sum of the parts is the whole, necessarily in the South at large—represent not merely an improvement upon those whose places they took, but upon the whole a higher standard of Federal service than has hitherto been attained in the communities in question. I may add that the proportion of colored men among these new appointees is only about one in a hundred.

In view of all these facts I have been surprised, and somewhat pained, at what seems to me the incomprehensible outcry in the South about my actions—an outcry apparently started in New York for reasons wholly unconnected with the question nominally at issue. I am concerned at the attitude thus taken by so many of the Southern people; but I am not in the least angry; and still less will this attitude have the effect of making me swerve one hair’s breadth, to one side or the other, from the course I have marked out—the course I have consistently followed in the past and shall consistently follow in the future.

With regard,
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Hon. Clark Howell
Editor, “The Constitution,”
Atlanta, Ga.

On May 18, 1903, William A. Miller was removed by the Public Printer from his position of Assistant Foreman at the Government Printing Office. Mr. Miller filed a complaint with the Civil Service Commission alleging that his removal had been made in violation of the civil service law and rules. After an investigation of the complaint, and upon July 6th, the Civil Service Commission advised the Public Printer of its decision as follows:

“Section 2 of Civil Service Rule XII, governing removals, provides
that no person shall be removed from a competitive position except
for such cause as will promote the efficiency of the public service.
The Commission does not consider expulsion from a labor union, being
the action of a body is no way connected with the public service nor
having authority over public employees, to be such a cause as will
promote the efficiency of the public service.

“As the only reason given by you for your removal of Mr. Miller
is that he was expelled from Local Union No. 4, International
Brotherhood of Bookbinders, you are advised that the Commission can
not recognize his removal and must request that he be reassigned to
duty in his position.”

Mr. Miller’s complaint had also been filed with the President, under whose direction it was being investigated by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor simultaneously with the investigation by the Civil Service Commission. As a result of such investigations, the following letters, under dates of July 13th and 14th, 1903, were written by the President:

OYSTER BAY, N. Y.
_July 13, 1903_

MY DEAR SECRETARY CORTELYOU:

In accordance with the letter of the Civil Service Commission of July 6th, the Public Printer will reinstate Mr. W. A. Miller in his position. Meanwhile I will withhold my final decision of the whole case until I have received the report of the investigation on Miller’s second communication, which you notify me has been begun to-day, July 13th.

On the face of the papers presented, Miller would appear to have been removed in violation of law. There is no objection to the employees of the Government Printing Office constituting themselves into a union if they so desire; but no rules or resolutions of that union can be permitted to over-ride the laws of the United States, which it is my sworn duty to enforce.

Please communicate a copy of this letter to the Public Printer for his information and that of his subordinates.

Very truly yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

HON. GEORGE B. CORTELYOU,
Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

OYSTER BAY, N. Y.
_July 14, 1903_

MY DEAR MR. CORTELYOU:

In connection with my letter of yesterday I call attention to this judgment and award by the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission in its report to me of March 18th last:

It is adjudged and awarded that no person shall be refused
employment or in any way discriminated against on account of
membership or non-membership in any labor organization, and that
there shall be no discrimination against or interference with any
employee who is not a member of any labor organization by members of
such organization.

I heartily approve of this award and judgment by the commission appointed by me, which itself included a member of a labor union. This commission was dealing with labor organizations working for private employers. It is of course mere elementary decency to require that all the Government departments shall be handled in accordance with the principle thus clearly and fearlessly enunciated.

Please furnish a copy of this letter both to Mr. Palmer and to the Civil Service Commission for their guidance.

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

HON. GEO. B. CORTELYOU,
Secretary of Commerce and Labor.

_September 29, 1903_

Pursuant to the request of Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, the President granted an interview this evening to the following members of the executive council of that body: Mr. Samuel Gompers, Mr. James Duncan, Mr. John Mitchell, Mr. James O’Connell and Mr. Frank Morrison, at which various subjects of legislation in the interest of labor, as well as executive action, were discussed. Concerning the case of William A. Miller the President made the following statement:

I thank you and your committee for your courtesy, and I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you. It will always be a pleasure to see you or any representatives of your organizations or of your Federation as a whole.

As regards the Miller case, I have little to add to what I have already said. In dealing with it I ask you to remember that I am dealing purely with the relation of the Government to its employees. I must govern my action by the laws of the land, which I am sworn to administer, and which differentiate any case in which the Government of the United States is a party from all other cases whatsoever. These laws are enacted for the benefit of the whole people, and can not and must not be construed as permitting discrimination against some of the people. I am President of all the people of the United States, without regard to creed, color, birthplace, occupation, or social condition. My aim is to do equal and exact justice as among them all. In the employment and dismissal of men in the Government service I can no more recognize the fact that a man does or does not belong to a union as being for or against him than I can recognize the fact that he is a Protestant or a Catholic, a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or against him.

In the communications sent me by various labor organizations protesting against the retention of Miller in the Government Printing Office, the grounds alleged are twofold: 1, that he is a non-union man; 2, that he is not personally fit. The question of his personal fitness is one to be settled in the routine of administrative detail, and can not be allowed to conflict with or to complicate the larger question of governmental discrimination for or against him or any other man because he is or is not a member of a union. This is the only question now before me for decision; and as to this my decision is final.

OYSTER BAY, N. Y.
_August 6, 1903_

MY DEAR GOVERNOR DURBIN:

Permit me to thank you as an American citizen for the admirable way in which you have vindicated the majesty of the law by your recent action in reference to lynching. I feel, my dear sir, that you have made all men your debtors who believe, as all far-seeing men must, that the well-being, indeed the very existence, of the Republic depends upon that spirit of orderly liberty under the law which is as incompatible with mob violence as with any form of despotism. Of course mob violence is simply one form of anarchy; and anarchy is now, as it always has been, the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny.

I feel that you have not only reflected honor upon the State which for its good fortune has you as its Chief Executive, but upon the whole nation. It is incumbent upon every man throughout this country not only to hold up your hands in the course you have been following, but to show his realization that the matter is one which is of vital concern to us all.

All thoughtful men must feel the gravest alarm over the growth of lynching in this country, and especially over the peculiarly hideous forms so often taken by mob violence when colored men are the victims—on which occasions the mob seems to lay most weight, not on the crime, but on the color of the criminal. In a certain proportion of these cases the man lynched has been guilty of a crime horrible beyond description; a crime so horrible that as far as he himself is concerned he has forfeited the right to any kind of sympathy whatsoever. The feeling of all good citizens that such a hideous crime shall not be hideously punished by mob violence is due not in the least to sympathy for the criminal, but to a very lively sense of the train of dreadful consequences which follows the course taken by the mob in exacting inhuman vengeance for an inhuman wrong. In such cases, moreover, it is well to remember that the criminal not merely sins against humanity in inexpiable and unpardonable fashion, but sins particularly against his own race, and does them a wrong far greater than any white man can possibly do them. Therefore, in such cases the colored people throughout the land should in every possible way show their belief that they, more than all others in the community, are horrified at the commission of such a crime and are peculiarly concerned in taking every possible measure to prevent its recurrence and to bring the criminal to immediate justice. The slightest lack of vigor either in denunciation of the crime or in bringing the criminal to justice is itself unpardonable.

Moreover, every effort should be made under the law to expedite the proceedings of justice in the case of such an awful crime. But it can not be necessary in order to accomplish this to deprive any citizen of those fundamental rights to be heard in his own defence which are so dear to us all and which lie at the root of our liberty. It certainly ought to be possible by the proper administration of the laws to secure swift vengeance upon the criminal; and the best and immediate efforts of all legislators, judges, and citizens should be addressed to securing such reforms in our legal procedure as to leave no vestige of excuse for those misguided men who undertake to reap vengeance through violent methods.

Men who have been guilty of a crime like rape or murder should be visited with swift and certain punishment, and the just effort made by the courts to protect them in their rights should under no circumstances be perverted into permitting any mere technicality to avert or delay their punishment. The substantial rights of the prisoner to a fair trial must of course be guaranteed, as you have so justly insisted that they should be; but, subject to this guarantee, the law must work swiftly and surely, and all the agents of the law should realize the wrong they do when they permit justice to be delayed or thwarted for technical or insufficient reasons. We must show that the law is adequate to deal with crime by freeing it from every vestige of technicality and delay.

But the fullest recognition of the horror of the crime and the most complete lack of sympathy with the criminal can not in the least diminish our horror at the way in which it has become customary to avenge these crimes and at the consequences that are already proceeding therefrom. It is of course inevitable that where vengeance is taken by a mob it should frequently light on innocent people; and the wrong done in such a case to the individual is one for which there is no remedy. But even where the real criminal is reached, the wrong done by the mob to the community itself is wellnigh as great. Especially is this true where the lynching is accompanied with torture. There are certain hideous sights which when once seen can never be wholly erased from the mental retina. The mere fact of having seen them implies degradation. This is a thousandfold stronger when instead of merely seeing the deed the man has participated in it. Whoever in any part of our country has ever taken part in lawlessly putting to death a criminal by the dreadful torture of fire must forever after have the awful spectacle of his own handiwork seared into his brain and soul. He can never again be the same man.

This matter of lynching would be a terrible thing even if it stopped with the lynching of men guilty of the inhuman and hideous crime of rape; but as a matter of fact, lawlessness of this type never does stop and never can stop in such fashion. Every violent man in the community is encouraged by every case of lynching in which the lynchers go unpunished to himself take the law into his own hands whenever it suits his own convenience. In the same way the use of torture by the mob in certain cases is sure to spread until it is applied more or less indiscriminately in other cases. The spirit of lawlessness grows with what it feeds on, and when mobs with impunity lynch criminals for one cause, they are certain to begin to lynch real or alleged criminals for other causes. In the recent cases of lynching, over three-fourths were not for rape at all, but for murder, attempted murder, and even less heinous offences. Moreover, the history of these recent cases shows the awful fact that when the minds of men are habituated to the use of torture by lawless bodies to avenge crimes of a peculiarly revolting description, other lawless bodies will use torture in order to punish crimes of an ordinary type. Surely no patriot can fail to see the fearful brutalization and debasement which the indulgence of such a spirit and such practices inevitably portends. Surely all public men, all writers for the daily press, all clergymen, all teachers, all who in any way have a right to address the public, should with every energy unite to denounce such crimes and to support those engaged in putting them down. As a people we claim the right to speak with peculiar emphasis for freedom and for fair treatment of all men without regard to differences of race, fortune, creed, or color. We forfeit the right so to speak when we commit or condone such crimes as these of which I speak.

The nation, like the individual, can not commit a crime with impunity. If we are guilty of lawlessness and brutal violence, whether our guilt consists in active participation therein or in mere connivance and encouragement, we shall assuredly suffer later on because of what we have done. The cornerstone of this Republic, as of all free government, is respect for and obedience to the law. Where we permit the law to be defied or evaded, whether by rich man or poor man, by black man or white, we are by just so much weakening the bonds of our civilization and increasing the chances of its overthrow, and of the substitution therefor of a system in which there shall be violent alternations of anarchy and tyranny.

Sincerely yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

HON. WINFIELD T. DURBIN,
Governor of Indiana,
Indianapolis, Ind.

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

MESSAGE

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

The Congress assembles this year under the shadow of a great calamity. On the sixth of September, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist while attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, and died in that city on the fourteenth of that month.

Of the last seven elected Presidents, he is the third who has been murdered, and the bare recital of this fact is sufficient to justify grave alarm among all loyal American citizens. Moreover, the circumstances of this, the third assassination of an American President, have a peculiarity sinister significance. Both President Lincoln and President Garfield were killed by assassins of types unfortunately not uncommon in history; President Lincoln falling a victim to the terrible passions aroused by four years of civil war, and President Garfield to the revengeful vanity of a disappointed office-seeker. President McKinley was killed by an utterly depraved criminal belonging to that body of criminals who object to all governments, good and bad alike, who are against any form of popular liberty if it is guaranteed by even the most just and liberal laws, and who are as hostile to the upright exponent of a free people’s sober will as to the tyrannical and irresponsible despot.

It is not too much to say that at the time of President McKinley’s death he was the most widely loved man in all the United States; while we have never had any public man of his position who has been so wholly free from the bitter animosities incident to public life. His political opponents were the first to bear the heartiest and most generous tribute to the broad kindliness of nature, the sweetness and gentleness of character which so endeared him to his close associates. To a standard of lofty integrity in public life he united the tender affections and home virtues which are all-important in the make-up of national character. A gallant soldier in the great war for the Union, he also shone as an example to all our people because of his conduct in the most sacred and intimate of home relations. There could be no personal hatred of him, for he never acted with aught but consideration for the welfare of others. No one could fail to respect him who knew him in public or private life. The defenders of those murderous criminals who seek to excuse their criminality by asserting that it is exercised for political ends, inveigh against wealth and irresponsible power. But for this assassination even this base apology can not be urged.

President McKinley was a man of moderate means, a man whose stock sprang from the sturdy tillers of the soil, who had himself belonged among the wage-workers, who had entered the Army as a private soldier. Wealth was not struck at when the President was assassinated, but the honest toil which is content with moderate gains after a lifetime of unremitting labor, largely in the service of the public. Still less was power struck at in the sense that power is irresponsible or centred in the hands of any one individual. The blow was not aimed at tyranny or wealth. It was aimed at one of the strongest champions the wage-worker has ever had; at one of the most faithful representatives of the system of public rights and representative government who has ever risen to public office. President McKinley filled that political office for which the entire people vote, and no President—not even Lincoln himself—was ever more earnestly anxious to represent the well thought out wishes of the people; his one anxiety in every crisis was to keep in closest touch with the people—to find out what they thought and to endeavor to give expression to their thought, after having endeavored to guide that thought aright. He had just been re-elected to the Presidency because the majority of our citizens, the majority of our farmers and wage-workers, believed that he had faithfully upheld their interests for four years. They felt themselves in close and intimate touch with him. They felt that he represented so well and so honorably all their ideals and aspirations that they wished him to continue for another four years to represent them.