Chapter IV: Part 4

There are good people who are afraid of each type of legislation; and much the same kind of argument that is now advanced against the effort to regulate big corporations has been again and again advanced against the effort to secure proper employers’ liability laws or proper factory laws with reference to women and children; much the same kind of argument was advanced but five years ago against the franchise-tax law enacted in this State while I was Governor.

Of course there is always the danger of abuse if legislation of this type is approached in a hysterical or sentimental spirit, or, above all, if it is approached in a spirit of envy and hatred toward men of wealth.

We must not try to go too fast, under penalty of finding that we may be going in the wrong direction; and, in any event, we ought always to proceed by evolution and not by revolution. The laws must be conceived and executed in a spirit of sanity and justice, and with exactly as much regard for the rights of the big man as for the rights of the little man—treating big man and little man exactly alike.

Our ideal must be the effort to combine all proper freedom for individual effort with some guarantee that the effort is not exercised in contravention of the eternal and immutable principles of justice.

TO THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE COLORED INDUSTRIAL ASSOCIATION,
RICHMOND, VA., OCTOBER 18, 1905

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

I want to congratulate you upon the showing your school-children have made, and further I wish as an American to congratulate the representatives of the colored race who have shown such progress in directing the industrial interests of this city. All they have done in that way means a genuine progress for the race. I am glad as an American for what you are doing. The standing of the bank which in this city is managed by colored men should give genuine pride to all the colored men of this country. Its record is an enviable one. You colored men who show in business life both ability and a high order of integrity are real benefactors not only of your race but of the whole country.

AT CAPITOL SQUARE, RICHMOND, VA., OCTOBER 18, 1905

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

I trust I need hardly say how great is my pleasure at speaking in this historic capital of your historic State—the State than which no other has contributed a larger proportion to the leadership of the nation; for on the honor roll of those American worthies whose greatness is not only for the age but for all time, not only for one nation but for all the world, on this honor roll Virginia’s name stands above all others. And in greeting all of you, I know that no one will grudge my saying a special word of acknowledgment to the veterans of the Civil War. A man would indeed be but a poor American who could without a thrill witness the way in which, in city after city in the North as in the South, on every public occasion, the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray now march and stand shoulder to shoulder, giving tangible proof that we are all now in fact as well as in name a reunited people, a people infinitely richer because of the priceless memories left to all Americans by you men who fought in the great war. Last Memorial Day I spoke in Brooklyn, at the unveiling of the statue of a Northern general, under the auspices of the Grand Army of the Republic, and that great audience cheered every allusion to the valor and self-devotion of the men who followed Lee as heartily as they cheered every allusion to the valor and self-devotion of the men who followed Grant. The wounds left by the great civil war have long healed, but its memories remain. Think of it, oh, my countrymen, think of the good fortune that is ours! That whereas every other war of modern times has left feelings of rancor and bitterness to keep asunder the combatants, our great war has left to the sons and daughters of the men who fought, on whichever side they fought, the same right to feel the keenest pride in the great deeds alike of the men who fought on one side and of the men who fought on the other. The proud self-sacrifice, the resolute and daring courage, the high and steadfast devotion to the right as each man saw it, whether Northerner or Southerner, these qualities render all Americans forever the debtors of those who in the dark days from ’61 to ’65 proved their truth by their endeavor. Here around Richmond, here in your own State, there lies battlefield after battlefield, rendered forever memorable by the men who counted death as but a little thing when weighed in the balance against doing their duty as it was given them to see it. These men have left us of the younger generation not merely the memory of what they did in war, but of what they did in peace. Foreign observers predicted that when such a great war closed it would be impossible for the hundreds of thousands of combatants to return to the paths of peace. They predicted ceaseless disorder, wild turbulence, the alternation of anarchy and despotism. But the good sense and self-restraint of the average American citizen falsified these prophecies. The great armies disbanded and the private in the ranks, like the officer who had commanded him, went back to take up the threads of his life where he had dropped them when the call to arms came. It was a wonderful, a marvelous thing, in a country consecrated to peace with but an infinitesimal regular army, to develop so quickly the huge hosts which confronted one another between the James and the Potomac and along the Mississippi and its tributaries. But it was an even more wonderful, an even more marvelous thing, how these great hosts, once their work done, resolved themselves into the general fabric of the Nation.

Great though the meed of praise is which is due the South for the soldierly valor her sons displayed during the four years of war, I think that even greater praise is due to her for what her people have accomplished in the forty years of peace which followed. For forty years the South has made not merely a courageous, but at times a desperate struggle, as she has striven for moral and material well-being. Her success has been extraordinary, and all citizens of our common country should feel joy and pride in it; for any great deed done or any fine qualities shown by one group of Americans of necessity reflects credit upon all Americans. Only a heroic people could have battled successfully against the conditions with which the people of the South found themselves face to face at the end of the Civil War. There had been utter destruction and disaster, and wholly new business and social problems had to be faced with the scantiest means. The economic and political fabric had to be readjusted in the midst of dire want, of grinding poverty. The future of the broken, war-swept South seemed beyond hope, and if her sons and daughters had been of weaker fibre there would in very truth have been no hope. But the men and the sons of the men who had faced with unfaltering front every alternation of good and evil fortune from Manassas to Appomattox, and the women, their wives and mothers, whose courage and endurance had reached an even higher heroic level—these men and these women set themselves undauntedly to the great task before them. For twenty years the struggle was hard and at times doubtful. Then the splendid qualities of your manhood and womanhood told, as they were bound to tell, and the wealth of your extraordinary natural resources began to be shown. Now the teeming riches of mine and field and factory attest the prosperity of those who are all the stronger because of the trials and struggles through which this prosperity has come. You stand loyally to your traditions and memories; you also stand loyally for our great common country of to-day and for our common flag, which symbolizes all that is brightest and most hopeful for the future of mankind; you face the new age in the spirit of the age. Alike in your material and in your spiritual and intellectual development you stand abreast of the foremost in the world’s progress.

And now, my fellow-citizens, my fellow-Americans, exactly as all of us, whether we live in the East or the West, in the North or the South, have the right merely as Americans to feel pride in every great deed done by any American in the past, and exactly as we are knit together by this common heritage of memories, so we are knit together, by the bond of our common duties in the present, our common interest in the future. Many and great problems lie before us. If we treat the mighty memories of the past merely as excuses for sitting lazily down in the present, or for standing aside from the rough work of the world, then these memories will prove a curse instead of a blessing. But if we treat them as I believe we shall treat them, not as excuses for inaction, but as incentives to make us show that we are worthy of our fathers and of our fathers’ fathers, then in truth the deeds of the past will not have been wasted, for they shall bring forth fruit a hundred-fold in the present generation. We of this Nation, we, the citizens of this mighty and wonderful Republic, stretching across a continent between the two greatest oceans, enjoy extraordinary privileges, and as our opportunity is great, therefore our responsibility is great. We have duties to perform both abroad and at home, and we can not shirk either set of duties and fully retain our self-respect.

In foreign affairs we must make up our minds that, whether we wish it or not, we are a great people and must play a great part in the world. It is not open to us to choose whether we will play that great part or not. We have to play it; all we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill. And I have too much confidence in my countrymen to doubt what the decision will be. Our mission in the world should be one of peace, but not the peace of cravens, the peace granted contemptuously to those who purchase it by surrendering the right. No! Our voice must be effective for peace because it is raised for righteousness first and for peace only as the handmaiden of righteousness. We must be scrupulous in respecting the rights of the weak, and no less careful to make it evident that we do not act through fear of the strong. We must be scrupulous in doing justice to others and scrupulous in exacting justice for ourselves. We must beware equally of that sinister and cynical teaching which would persuade us to disregard ethical standards in international relations, and of the no less hurtful folly which would stop the whole work of civilization by a well-meant but silly persistency in trying to apply to peoples unfitted for them those theories of government and of national action which are only suited for the most advanced races. In particular, we must remember that in undertaking to build the Panama Canal we have necessarily undertaken to police the seas at either end of it; and this means that we have a peculiar interest in the preservation of order in the coasts and islands of the Caribbean. I firmly believe that by a little wise and generous aid we can help even the most backward of the peoples in these coasts and islands forward along the path of orderly liberty so that they can stand alone. If we decline to give them such help the result will be bad both for them and for us; and will in the end in all probability cause us to face humiliation or bloodshed.

The problems that face us abroad are important, but the problems that face us at home are even more important. The extraordinary growth of industrialism during the last half century brings every civilized people face to face with the gravest social and economic questions. This is an age of combination among capitalists and combination among wage-workers. It is idle to try to prevent such combinations. Our efforts should be to see that they work for the good and not for the harm of the body politic. New devices of law are necessary from time to time in order to meet the changed and changing conditions. But after all we will do well to remember that, although the problems to be solved change from generation to generation, the spirit in which their solution must be attempted remains forever the same. It is in peace as it is in war. Tactics change and weapons change. The Continental troops in their blue and buff, who fought under Washington and Greene and Wayne, differed entirely in arms and in training from those who in blue or gray faced one another in the armies of Grant and of Lee, of Sherman and of Johnston. And now the sons of these same Union and Confederate veterans, who serve in our gallant little army of to-day, wear a different uniform, carry a different weapon, and practice different tactics. But the soul of the soldier has remained the same throughout, and the qualities which drove forward to victory or to death the men of ’76 and the men of ’61 are the very qualities which the men of to-day must keep unchanged if in the hour of need the honor of the Nation is to be kept untarnished. So it is in civil life. This Government was formed with as its basic idea the principle of treating each man on his worth as a man, of paying no heed to whether he was rich or poor, no heed to his creed or his social standing, but only to the way in which he performed his duty to himself, to his neighbor, to the state. From this principle we can not afford to vary by so much as a hand’s breadth. Many republics have risen in the past, and some of them flourished long, but sooner or later they fell; and the cause most potent in bringing about their fall was in almost all cases the fact that they grew to be governments in the interest of a class instead of governments in the interest of all. It made no difference as to which class it was that thus wrested to its own advantage the governmental machinery. It was ultimately as fatal to the cause of freedom whether it was the rich who oppressed the poor or the poor who plundered the rich. The crime of brutal disregard of the rights of others is as much a crime when it manifests itself in the shape of greed and brutal arrogance on the one side, as when it manifests itself in the shape of envy and lawless violence on the other. Our aim must be to deal justice to each man; no more and no less. This purpose must find its expression and support not merely in our collective action through the agencies of the Government, but in our social attitude. Rich man and poor man must alike feel that on the one hand they are protected by law and that on the other hand they are responsible to the law; for each is entitled to be fairly dealt with by his neighbor and by the State; and if we as citizens of this Nation are true to ourselves and to the traditions of our forefathers such fair measure of justice shall always be dealt to each man; so that as far as we can bring it about each shall receive his dues, each shall be given the chance to show the stuff there is in him, shall be secured against wrong, and in turn prevented from wronging others. More than this no man is entitled to, and less than this no man shall have.

AT THE LUNCHEON AT RICHMOND, VA., OCTOBER 18, 1905

_Mr. Mayor, Governor, and you, my Hosts_:

One among the very many great Virginians at the time when this Nation was born—Patrick Henry—said: “We are no longer New Yorkers or New Englanders, Pennsylvanians or Virginians, we are Americans.” And surely, Mr. Mayor, the man would be but a poor American who was not touched and stirred to the depths by the reception that I have met with to-day in this great historic city of America. Coming to-day by the statue of Stonewall Jackson, in the city of Lee, I felt what a privilege it is that I, as an American, have in claiming that you yourselves have no more right of kinship in Lee and Jackson than I have. I can claim to be a middling good American, because my ancestry was half Southern and half Northern; I was born in the East and I have lived a good while in the West—so long in fact that I do not admit that any man can be a better Westerner than I am. In short, gentlemen, I claim to be neither Northerner nor Southerner, neither Easterner nor Westerner, but a good American, pure and simple.

Next only to a man’s having worn the blue comes the fact of the man’s having worn the gray, as entitling him to honor in my sight. Last year I told General Fitzhugh Lee that I wanted to add to my collection of autograph letters of great Americans—Lincoln, Grant, Clay, Jefferson (turning to the Governor), your namesake, Andrew Jackson—that of General Lee, with his photograph. I got from General Fitzhugh Lee a letter of General Lee and a photograph of him, handed to me after General Fitzhugh Lee’s death. I was not able to thank my old and valued friend, the father, but I put the son on my staff; and now I have the grandson of General Grant and the grandnephew of General Lee and the son of Phil Sheridan on my staff.

I noticed that the statue of Stonewall Jackson had been raised as a gift by certain Englishmen. The best biography of General Jackson was by an Englishman, Colonel Henderson. It is a curious and rather lamentable fact that he died just as he was about to undertake another biography which I had earnestly asked him to undertake. I had written him urging that he should finish his very remarkable military study of Stonewall Jackson by writing a military biography of General Lee, and he had written me back that he intended to do so. Shortly afterward I learned of his death.

Gentlemen, I can not sufficiently express to you my deep appreciation of the way in which you have greeted me here to-day. You can not be nearly as glad to see me as I am to see you. Let me say once more what I said in my more formal address. Think of the good fortune that is ours, think of the good fortune that is ours as a people in having, each of us, whether we in our own persons or through our ancestors, wore the blue or the gray, the proud right to challenge as our own all of the valor, all of the self-devotion, all of the steadfast adherence to right as God gave to each man to see the right, shown alike by the man who wore the blue and by the man who wore the gray in the great contest that was waged from ’61 to ’65.

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

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

I am glad here at the capital of North Carolina to have a chance to greet so many of the sons and daughters of your great State. North Carolina’s part in our history has ever been high and honorable. It was in North Carolina that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence foreshadowed the course taken in a few short months by the representatives of the thirteen colonies assembled in Philadelphia. North Carolina can rightfully say that she pointed us the way which led to the formation of the new Nation. In the Revolution she did many memorable deeds; and the battle of King’s Mountain marked the turning point of the Revolutionary War in the South. But I congratulate you not only upon your past, but upon your present. I congratulate you upon the great industrial activity shown in your Commonwealth—an industrial activity which, to mention but one thing, has placed this State second only to one other in the number of its textile factories. You are showing in practical fashion your realization of the truth that there must be a foundation of material well-being in order that any community may make real and rapid progress. And I am happy to say that you are in addition showing in practical fashion your understanding of the great truth that this material well-being, though necessary as a foundation, can only be the foundation, and that upon it must be raised the superstructure of a higher life, if the Commonwealth is to stand as it should stand. More and more you are giving care and attention to education; and education means the promotion not only of industry, but of that good citizenship which rests upon individual rights and upon the recognition by each individual that he has duties as well as rights—in other words, of that good citizenship which rests upon moral integrity and intellectual freedom. The man must be decent in his home life, his private life, of course; but this is not by itself enough. The man who fails to be honest and brave both in his political franchise and in his private business contributes to political and social anarchy. Self-government is not an easy thing. Only those communities are fit for it in which the average individual practices the virtue of self-command, of self-restraint, of wise disinterestedness combined with wise self-interest; where the individual possesses common-sense, honesty, and courage.

And now I want to say a word to you on a special subject in which all the country is concerned, but in which North Carolina has a special concern. The preservation of the forests is vital to the welfare of every country. China and the Mediterranean countries offer examples of the terrible effect of deforestation upon the physical geography, and therefore ultimately upon the national well-being, of the nations. One of the most obvious duties which our generation owes to the generations that are to come after us is to preserve the existing forests. The prime difference between civilized and uncivilized peoples is that in civilized peoples each generation works not only for its own well-being, but for the well-being of the generations yet unborn, and if we permit the natural resources of this land to be destroyed so that we hand over to our children a heritage diminished in value we thereby prove our unfitness to stand in the forefront of civilized peoples. One of the greatest of these heritages is our forest wealth. It is the upper altitudes of the forested mountains that are most valuable to the Nation as a whole, especially because of their effects upon the water supply. Neither State nor Nation can afford to turn these mountains over to the unrestrained greed of those who would exploit them at the expense of the future. We can not afford to wait longer before assuming control, in the interest of the public, of these forests; for if we do wait, the vested interests of private parties in them may become so strongly intrenched that it may be a most serious as well as a most expensive task to oust them. If the Eastern States are wise, then from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf we will see, within the next few years, a policy set on foot similar to that so fortunately carried out in the high Sierras of the West by the National Government. All the higher Appalachians should be reserved, either by the States or by the Nation. I much prefer that they should be put under National control, but it is a mere truism to say that they will not be reserved either by the States or by the Nation unless you people of the South show a strong interest therein.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_Mr. McNeill_:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

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

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

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

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

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

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

AT ROSWELL, GA., OCTOBER 20, 1905

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

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

I hardly like to say how deeply my heart is moved by coming back here among you. Among the earliest recollections I have as a child is hearing from my mother and my aunt (Miss Annie Bulloch, she then was) about Roswell; of how the Pratts, and Kings, and Dunwoodys, and Bullochs came here first to settle; about the old homestead, the house on the hill; about the Chattahoochee; about all kinds and sorts of incidents that would not interest you, but interested me a great deal when I was a child. I wish I could spend hours here to look all through and see the different places about which I have heard all kinds of incidents. All those anecdotes, looking back now, I can see taught me an enormous amount, perhaps all the more because they were not intended to teach anything. I think we are very apt to learn most when neither we nor the people talking to us intend to teach anything. All those stories of the life of those days taught me what a real home life, a real neighbor life, was and should be. Looking back now at what I learned through those stories of the childhood of my mother, my aunts, my uncles, I can understand why the boys and girls of the Roswell of that time grew up to be men and women who were good servants of the community, who were good husbands, good fathers, good wives and mothers; how it was that they learned to do their duty aright in peace and in war also.

It is my very great good fortune to have the right to claim that my blood is half Southern and half Northern; and I would deny the right of any man here to feel a greater pride in the deeds of every Southerner than I feel. Of the children, the brothers and sisters of my mother who were born and brought up in that house on the hill over there, my two uncles afterward entered the Confederate service, and served in the Confederate Navy. One, the younger man, served on the “Alabama” as the youngest officer aboard her. He was captain of one of her broadside 32-pounders in her final fight, and when at the very end the “Alabama” was sinking, and the “Kearsarge” passed under her stern and came up along the side that had not been engaged hitherto, my uncle, Irving Bulloch, shifted his gun from one side to the other and fired the last two shots fired from the “Alabama.” The other, the elder, James Dunwoody Bulloch, was an admiral in the Confederate service. Of all the people whom I have ever met he was the one that came nearest to that beautiful creation of Thackeray—Colonel Newcome.

Men and women, don’t you think that I have the ancestral right to claim a proud kinship with those who showed their devotion to duty as they saw the duty, whether they wore the gray or whether they wore the blue? All Americans who are worthy the name feel an equal pride in the valor of those who fought on one side or the other, provided only that each did with all his strength and soul and mind his duty as it was given him to see his duty.

AT PIEDMONT PARK, ATLANTA, GA., OCTOBER 20, 1905

_Governor; Mr. Mayor; and you, My Valued Friend, Senator Clay; and
you, Men and Women of Georgia; Men and Women of my Mother’s State;
My Fellow-Citizens and Fellow-Americans_:

I can not too strongly express the feeling of gratitude I have for the reception given to me to-day. I want to give you a word of explanation as to what the Senator last said. The Senator said quite truly that when I was in doubt as to the capacity or honesty of any man I was seeking to appoint, or the wisdom of any policy, I was in the habit of going to him. I will tell you why: because the Senator does what I hope I try to do and what I have preached. Whenever I go to the Senator I know I get a square deal. As I said once before to-day, the Senator comes in that group of men upon whose advice I, like every other American President who wishes to do what is best for the people, must rely. If you will come down to bed-rock fact, the party differences are mighty small compared to the common interests that all of us have as Americans. On the great majority of questions, on almost all the important questions that come up, what you want in public life is to find the public man who cares for the interests of the people, and who not only cares for them, but has the sense to know how to make that care effective. I have found that I could consult Senator Clay with absolute freedom and absolute confidence in his good faith and sincere desire to do what was best for our people. All I had to do was to convince him that I was right. I was not always successful in convincing him; but if I did convince him I knew he would stand up for what he thought right.