Chapter V: Part 5

Before speaking to all of you here together let me say just one word suggested by the generous and unexpected gift presented to me by the representatives of organized labor here in Atlanta. I am speaking in this mighty city, an industrial centre of the Union, in a great agricultural State. It is of course a mere truism to say that if the men who till the soil and the wage-workers are well off the rest of the people will be well off; and it is the part of wise statesmanship to try primarily to do all that can be done for the farmers, the men who live on the land, who work on the land, and for the wage-workers, the men who actually do the work with their hands. It has been my good fortune to be an honorary member of a union of wage-workers. There are few honors that I have ever had of which I am prouder than that. I believe in organized labor; and I will do all that in me lies for the wage-worker, except to do wrong, and if I was willing to do that I would not be his true friend or any one else’s.

Having spoken to the farmer and the wage-worker, let me say just one word to the men of the great Civil War, to the men who fought from ’61 to ’65. I am sure that you would be pleased if you could hear the applause that greets, in any audience in the North, any allusion to the valor, the self-devotion, the fealty to right as God gave them to see the right, of the men who wore the gray in the great contest forty years ago. We are indeed thrice fortunate as a people; because to us it has been given alone among peoples in modern times to pass through one of the most terrible contests of history; and, now that the bitterness has died away, to cherish as our most precious heritage the memories bequeathed to us alike by the men in blue and the men in gray, alike by those who followed Grant and those who followed Lee, because each man showed his readiness to sacrifice all, to sacrifice life itself, upon the altar of duty as he saw it.

It is eminently appropriate that the representatives of organized labor should be called upon to play a part in any ceremonies in a great industrial city like this; and that incident alone would justify my choice of subjects to-day.

Here in this great industrial centre, in this city which is a typical Southern city, and therefore a typical American city, it is natural to consider certain phases of the many-sided industrial problem which this generation has to solve. In this world of ours it is practically impossible to get success of any kind on a large scale without paying something for it. The exceptions to the rule are too few to warrant our paying heed to them; and as a rule it may be said that something must be paid as an offset for everything we get and for everything we accomplish. This is notably true of our industrial life. The problems which we of America have to face to-day are very serious, but we will do well to remember that after all they are only part of the price which we have to pay for the triumphs we have won, for the high position to which we have attained. If we were a backward and stationary country we would not have to face these problems at all; but I think that most of us are agreed that to be backward and stationary would be altogether too heavy a price to pay for the avoidance of the problems in question. There are no labor troubles where there is no work to be done by labor. There are no troubles about corporations where the poverty of the community is such that it is not worth while to form corporations. There is no difficulty in regulating railroads where the resources of a region are so few that it does not pay to build railroads. There are many excellent people who shake their heads over the difficulties that as a nation we now have to face; but their melancholy is not warranted save in a very partial degree, for most of the things of which they complain are the inevitable accompaniments of the growth and greatness of which we are proud.

Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not for one moment mean to say that there are not many and serious evils with which we have to grapple, or that there are not unhealthy signs in the body social and politic; but I do mean to say that while we must not show a foolish optimism we must no less beware of a mere blind pessimism. There is every reason why we should be vigilant in searching out what is wrong and unflinchingly resolute in striving to remedy it. But at the same time we must not blind ourselves to what has been accomplished for good, and above all we must not lose our heads and become either hysterical or rancorous in grappling with what is bad.

Take such a question, for instance, as the question, or rather the group of questions, connected with the growth of corporations in this country. This growth has meant, of course, the growth of individual fortunes. Undoubtedly the growth of wealth in this country has had some very unfortunate accompaniments, but it seems to me that much the worst damage that people of wealth can do the rest of us is not any actual physical harm, but the awakening in our breasts of either the mean vice of worshiping mere wealth, and the man of mere wealth, for the wealth’s sake, or the equally mean vice of viewing with rancorous envy and hatred the men of wealth merely because they are men of wealth. Envy is, of course, merely a kind of crooked admiration; and we often see the very man who in public is most intemperate in his denunciation of wealth, in his private life most eager to obtain wealth, in no matter what fashion, and at no matter what moral cost.

Undoubtedly there is need of regulation by the Government, in the interest of the public, of these great corporations which in modern life have shown themselves to be the most efficient business implements, and which are, therefore, the implements commonly employed by the owners of large fortunes. The corporation is the creature of the State. It should always be held accountable to some sovereign, and this accountability should be real and not sham. Therefore, in my judgment, all corporations doing an interstate business, and this means the great majority of the largest corporations, should be held accountable to the Federal Government, because their accountability should be coextensive with their field of action. But most certainly we should not strive to prevent or limit corporate activity. We should strive to secure such effective supervision over it, such power of regulation over it, as to enable us to guarantee that its activity will be exercised only in ways beneficial to the public. The unwisdom of any well-meaning but misguided effort to check corporate activity has been shown in striking fashion in recent years by our experience in the Philippines and in Porto Rico. Our national legislators very properly determined that the islands should not be exploited by adventurers without regard to the interests of the people of the islands themselves. But unfortunately in their zeal to prevent the islands from being improperly exploited they took measures of such severity as to seriously, and in some respects vitally, to hamper and retard the development of the islands. There is nothing that the islands need more than to have their great natural resources developed, and these resources can be developed only by the abundant use of capital, which, of course, will not be put into them unless on terms sufficiently advantageous to offer prospects of good remuneration. We have made the terms not merely hard, but often prohibitory, with the result that American capital goes into foreign countries, like Mexico, and is there used with immense advantage to the country in its development, while it can not go into our own possessions or be used to develop the lands under our own flag. The chief sufferers by this state of things are the people of the islands themselves.

It is impossible too strongly to insist upon what ought to be the patent fact, that it is not only in the interest of the people of wealth themselves, but in our interest, in the interest of the public as a whole, that they should be treated fairly and justly; that if they show exceptional business ability they should be given exceptional reward for that ability. The tissues of our industrial fabric are interwoven in such complex fashion that what strengthens or weakens part also strengthens or weakens the whole. If we penalize industry we will ourselves in the end have to pay a considerable part of the penalty. If we make conditions such that the men of exceptional ability are able to secure marked benefits by the exercise of that ability, then we shall ourselves benefit somewhat. It is our interest no less than our duty to treat them fairly. On the other hand, it is no less their interest to treat us fairly—by “us” I mean the great body of the people, the men of moderate or small fortunes, the farmers, the wage-workers, the smaller business men and professional men. The man of great means who achieves fortune by crooked methods does wrong to the whole body politic. But he not merely does wrong to, he becomes a source of imminent danger to, other men of great means; for his ill-won success tends to arouse a feeling of resentment, which if it becomes inflamed fails to differentiate between the men of wealth who have done decently and the men of wealth who have not done decently.

The conscience of our people has been deeply shocked by the revelations made of recent years as to the way in which some of the great fortunes have been obtained and used, and there is, I think, in the minds of the people at large a strong feeling that a serious effort must be made to put a stop to the cynical dishonesty and contempt for right which have thus been revealed. I believe that something, and I hope that a good deal, can be done by law to remedy the state of things complained of. But when all that can be has thus been done, there will yet remain much which the law can not touch, and which must be reached by the force of public opinion. There are men who do not divide actions merely into those that are honest and those that are not, but create a third subdivision—that of law honesty; of that kind of honesty which consists in keeping clear of the penitentiary. It is hard to reach astute men of this type save by making them feel the weight of an honest public indignation. But this indignation, if it is to be effective, must be intelligent. It is, of course, to the great advantage of dishonest men of wealth if they are denounced, not for being dishonest, but for being wealthy, and if they are denounced in terms so overstrained and hysterical as to invite a reaction in their favor. We can not afford in this country to draw the distinction as between rich man and poor man. The distinction upon which we must insist is the vital, deep-lying, unchangeable distinction between the honest man and the dishonest man, between the man who acts decently and fairly by his neighbor and with a quick sense of his obligations, and the man who acknowledges no internal law save that of his own will and appetite. Above all we should treat with a peculiarly contemptuous abhorrence the man who in a spirit of sheer cynicism debauches either our business life or our political life. There are men who use the phrase “practical politics” as merely a euphemism for dirty politics, and it is such men who have brought the word “politician” into discredit. There are other men who use the noxious phrase “business is business” as an excuse and justification for every kind of mean and crooked work; and these men make honest Americans hang their heads because of some of the things they do. It is the duty of every honest patriot to rebuke in emphatic fashion alike the politician who does not understand that the only kind of “practical politics” which a nation can with safety tolerate is that kind which we know as clean politics, and that we are as severe in our condemnation of the business trickery which succeeds as of the business trickery which fails. The scoundrel who fails can never by any possibility be as dangerous to the community as the scoundrel who succeeds; and of all the men in the country, the worst citizens, those who should excite in our minds the most contemptuous abhorrence, are the men who have achieved great wealth, or any other form of success, in any save a clean and straightforward manner.

So much for the general subject of industrialism. Now, just a word in reference to one of the great staples of this country, which is peculiarly a staple of the Southern States. Of course I mean cotton. I am glad to see diversifications of industry in the South, the growth of manufactures as well as the growth of agriculture, and the growing growth of diversification of crops in agriculture. Nevertheless, it will always be true that in certain of the Southern States cotton will be the basis of the wealth, the mainstay of prosperity in the future as in the past. The cotton crop is of enormous consequence to the entire country. It was the cotton crop of the South that brought four hundred million dollars of foreign gold into the United States last year, turning the balance of trade in our favor. The soil and climate of the South are such that she enjoys a practical monopoly in the production of raw cotton. No other clothing material can be accepted as a substitute for cotton. I welcome the action of the planters in forming a cotton association, and every assistance shall be given them that can be given them by the National Government. Moreover, we must not forget that the work of the manufacturer in the South supplements the work of the planter. It is an advantage to manufacture the raw material here and sell to the world the finished goods. Under proper methods of distribution it may well be doubted whether there can be such a thing as overproduction of cotton. Last year’s crop was nearly fourteen million bales, and yet the price was sufficiently high to give a handsome profit to the planter. The consumption of cotton increases each year, and new uses are found for it.

This leads me to a matter of our foreign relations which directly concerns the cotton planter. At present our market for cotton is largely in China. The boycott of our goods in China during the past year was especially injurious to the cotton manufacturers. This Government is doing, and will continue to do, all it can to put a stop to the boycott. But there is one measure to be taken toward this end in which I shall need the assistance of the Congress. We must insist firmly on our rights; and China must beware of persisting in a course of conduct to which we can not honorably submit. But we in our turn must recognize our duties exactly as we insist upon our rights. We can not go into the international court of equity unless we go in with clean hands. We can not expect China to do us justice unless we do China justice. The chief cause in bringing about the boycott of our goods in China was undoubtedly our attitude toward the Chinese who come to this country. This attitude of ours does not justify the action of the Chinese in the boycott, and especially some of the forms which that action has taken. But the fact remains that in the past we have come short of our duty toward the people of China. It is our clear duty, in the interest of our own wage-workers, to forbid all Chinese of the coolie class—that is, laborers, skilled or unskilled—from coming here. The greatest of all duties is national self-preservation, and the most important step in national self-preservation is to preserve in every way the well-being of the wage-worker. I am convinced that the well-being of our wage-workers demands the exclusion of the Chinese coolies, and it is therefore our duty to exclude them, just as it would be the duty of China to exclude American laboring men if they became in any way a menace to China by entering into her country. The right is reciprocal, and in our last treaty with China it was explicitly recognized as inhering in both nations. But we should not only operate the law with as little harshness as possible, but we should show every courtesy and consideration and every encouragement to all Chinese who are not of the laboring class to come to this country. Every Chinese traveler or student, business man or professional man, should be given the same right of entry to, and the same courteous treatment in, this country as are accorded to the student or traveler, the business man or professional man, of any other nation. Our laws and treaties should be so framed as to guarantee to all Chinamen, save of the excepted coolie class, the same right of entry to this country and the same treatment while here as is guaranteed to citizens of any other nation. By executive action I am as rapidly as possible putting a stop to the abuses which have grown up during many years in the administration of this law. I can do a good deal, and will do a good deal, even without the action of the Congress; but I can not do all that should be done unless such action is taken, and that action I most earnestly hope will be taken. It is needed in our own interest, and especially in the interest of the Pacific Slope and of the South Atlantic and Gulf States; for it is short-sighted indeed for us to permit foreign competitors to drive us from the great markets of China. Moreover, the action I ask is demanded by considerations that are higher than mere interest, for I ask it in the name of what is just and right. America should take the lead in establishing international relations on the same basis of honest and upright dealing which we regard as essential as between man and man.

AT THE LUNCHEON OF THE PIEDMONT CLUB, ATLANTA, GA., OCTOBER 20, 1905

_Mr. Graves, and My Hosts_:

Surely it must be almost unnecessary for me to say not alone how I have enjoyed to-day, but how deeply touched and moved I have been at your reception of me, at Georgia’s reception of its descendant. I told the Governor I had a kind of ancestral reversionary right to his chair; because the first revolutionary President of Georgia was my great-great-grandfather, Archibald Bulloch, after whom one of my boys is named. No man could meet with such a reception as you have given me to-day, no man could see your city, could see your people, could address such an audience as I have addressed, and not be a better citizen afterward. It means a great deal to me to meet all of you personally, with all that you gentlemen typify in the world of politics, the world of business, and that world of ethical effort which can alone render either business or politics noble.

Now, I am going to very illy repay the courtesy with which I have been greeted, by causing for a minute or two acute discomfort to a man of whom I am very fond—Uncle Remus. Presidents may come and Presidents may go; but Uncle Remus “stays put.” Georgia has done a great many things for the Union; but she has never done more than when she gave Mr. Joel Chandler Harris to American literature. I suppose he is one of those literary people who insist that art should have nothing to do with morals, and will condemn me as a Philistine for not agreeing with them; but I want to say that one of the great reasons why I like what he has written is because after reading it I rise up with the purpose of being a better man, a man who is bound to strive to do what is in him for the cause of decency and for the cause of righteousness. Gentlemen, I feel too strongly to indulge in any language of mere compliment, of mere flattery. Where Mr. Harris seems to me to have done one of his greatest services is that he has written what exalts the South in the mind of every man who reads it, and yet what has not even a flavor of bitterness toward any other part of the Union. There is not an American anywhere who can read Mr. Harris’s stories—I am not speaking at the moment of his wonderful folk tales, but of his stories—who does not rise up a better citizen for having read them, who does not rise up with a more earnest desire to do his part in solving American problems aright. I can not too strongly express the obligations I am under to Mr. Harris; and one of those obligations is to feel as a principle that it is my duty (which if I have transgressed, I have not transgressed knowingly) never as an American to say anything that could be construed into an attack upon any portion of our common country.

Let me say one word on something entirely different, suggested by our talk here to-day. In speaking over with several of the gentlemen round about me their experiences in the Georgia Legislature and some of my experiences in the New York Legislature, the thing that struck me the most was the truth of Abraham Lincoln’s saying that “there is a deal of human nature in mankind.” The enemies we have to fight, the friends upon whom we have to rely, are substantially the same, in whatever part of the Union we live. We have to war against the same evil tendencies in our own souls; we have to strive to give expression to the same aspirations toward righteousness, toward honor. In doing this there are two things that are necessary above all others. In the first place, the fearless condemnation of what is wrong; the standing up for what is decent, for what is straight; the refusing to palter with the eternal principles of truth; refusing to pardon any man who for any reason lapses from the law that teaches that the man who is to be of service must obey the great rule of truth, of courage, and of honor. In the second place, to remember that second only in iniquity, second only in the injury done to the Republic, to the wrong of the man who acts corruptly, comes the wrong of the man who wantonly accuses the honest man of corruption. Thief is an ugly name, because it denotes an ugly thing; liar is as ugly a name as thief and as little to be desired by any right-thinking man; and either to steal or to lie marks the man as unfit for association with decent men and an enemy of all that is best and most upright in our political life. Too often we have seen public sentiment condoning the acts both of the thief and the liar (I am using ugly words, gentlemen, and I am using them because I wish to denote in the sharpest and in the most ugly fashion ugly attributes), when these acts are shifted a little so that they can be hidden under other names. The man who in political life, the man who in business life, by chicanery or by corruption in any shape or form, does or achieves what could not be done or achieved save by or through chicanery or corruption, stands on the same level with the man who in court is convicted of theft. The man who on no grounds, or on insufficient grounds, attacks the honest and upright man, whether in public or private life, as corrupt; who seeks to persuade men to believe that he is corrupt; who accuses him of corruption; this man stands on the same evil eminence of infamy with the corruptionist himself; and he is himself the greatest ally of the corruptionist he professes to denounce. The Republic will go down, our democratic institutions will be a failure, if the moral sense of the people grows so blunted that they will accept anything else, whether brilliancy or loyalty of party service, or any other deed or quality, as an offset to corruption. The minute that there arises a question of corruption in public life, if we have any sense of loyalty to the Union and its institutions, all political lines vanish at once. We can afford to consider in a public servant nothing but the question of his honesty or dishonesty when once that question is raised.

The surest way of blunting the public conscience in dealing with corruption is to confuse the public mind as to who is corrupt and who is not. There are plenty of men with whom we differ radically, plenty of men of whom we radically disapprove, as to whom it is right and necessary that we should express that disapprobation; but beware of expressing it in terms that imply moral reprobation. When we express moral reprobation let us be sure that we know the facts and then that we say only exactly what is true. To accuse an honest man of being a thief is to gladden the heart of every thief in the Nation. In our legislative bodies, in our National Congress, if you find that any man is corrupt, you are not to be excused if you do not hunt him out of public life, whether he is of one party or whether he is of another. But if you accuse, either specifically or in loose general declamation, all men of being corruptionists, you by just so much weaken your own strength when it becomes necessary to assail the genuine corruptionist. So far from asking that you be lenient in your judgment of any public man, I hold that you are recreant to duty if you are thus lenient. Do not be lenient, but do be just. If you dislike a man’s policy, say so. If you think he is acting in a way so misguided that he will bring ruin to the State or Nation, say so. But do not accuse him of corruption unless you know that he is corrupt; and if you know that he is corrupt, if you have good reason to believe that he is corrupt, then refuse under any plea of party expediency, under any consideration, to refrain from smiting him with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.

AT JACKSONVILLE, FLA., OCTOBER 21, 1905

_My Fellow-Citizens_:

Here in Florida, the first of the Gulf States which I have visited upon this trip, I wish to say a special word about the Panama Canal. I believe that the canal will be of great benefit to all of our people, but most of all to the States of the South Atlantic, the Gulf and the Pacific Slope. When completed the canal will stand as a monument to this Nation; for it will be the greatest engineering feat ever yet accomplished in the world. It will be a good thing for the world as a whole, and for the people of the Isthmus and of the northern portions of South America in particular. Because of our especial interest in it, and because of the position we occupy on this hemisphere, it is a matter of especial pride to us that our Nation, the American Nation, should have undertaken the performance of this world duty. A body of the most eminent engineers in the world, both Americans and foreigners, has been summoned to advise as to the exact type of canal which should be built. At no distant date I hope to be able to announce what their advice is, and also the action taken upon their advice. Meanwhile the work is already well under way, and has advanced sufficiently far to enable me to announce with certainty that it can surely be accomplished, and probably at rather less expense than was anticipated. But upon the last point, as well as upon the question of time, no positive statement can be made until the report of the commission of engineers as to the exact type of canal has been received. The work is as difficult as it is important; and it is of course inevitable that from time to time difficulties will occur and checks be encountered. Whenever such is the case the men of little faith at home will lose that little faith, and the critics who confound hysteria with emphasis will act after their kind. But our people as a whole possess not only faith, but resolution, and are of too virile fibre to be swept one way or the other by mere sensationalism. No check that may come will be of more than trivial and passing consequence, will inflict any permanent damage, or cause any serious delay. The work can be done, is being done, and will be done. What has already been accomplished is a guaranty as to the future.

When any such work is undertaken there are always many mere adventurers who flock to where it is going on, and many men who think they are adventurers, but who are in reality either weak or timid, follow in their footsteps. Some of the first class will now and then cause trouble in one way or another. But every care will be taken to detect any misdeed on their part and to punish them as soon as the misdeed is detected. As for the second class, they will cause trouble chiefly by losing heart, returning home, or writing home, and raising a cry that they are not happy, and that the conditions of life are not easy, or that the work is not being done as they think it ought to be done. Now these men stand just as the stragglers and laggards stand who are ever to be found in the rear of even a victorious army. The veterans of the Civil War who are here present will tell you that the very rear of an army, even when it is victorious, is apt to look and behave as if the victory were defeat. And just the same thing is true in any great enterprise in civil life; there are always weaklings who get trampled down or lose heart, and there are always people who listen to their complaints. They amount to nothing one way or the other, so far as achieving results is concerned; and their complaints and outcries need never detain us.

I call your attention specifically to the matter of health on the Isthmus. The climate was supposed to be deadly, and yellow fever, in especial, was supposed to be epidemic. Yet since we have assumed control there has been far less yellow fever than in our own country. The administration is steadily becoming better and more effective, from the hygienic as well as from every other standpoint. The work of building the canal is a great American work, in which the whole American people are interested. It has nothing to do with parties or partisanship, and is being carried on with absolute disregard to all merely political considerations; with regard only to efficiency, honesty, and economy.

The digging of the canal will, of course, greatly increase our interest in the Caribbean Sea. It will be our duty to police the canal, both in the interest of other nations and in our own interest. To do this it is, of course, indispensable to have an efficient navy (and I am happy to say that we are well on our way toward having one), and also to possess, as we already possess, certain strategic points to control the approach to the canal. In addition it is urgently necessary that the insular and continental countries within or bordering upon the Caribbean Sea should be able to secure fair dealing and orderly liberty within their own borders. I need not say that the United States not only has no purpose of aggression upon any republic, continental or insular, to the south of us, but has the friendliest feeling toward them, and desires nothing save their progress and prosperity. We do not wish another foot of territory; and I think our conduct toward Cuba is a guaranty that this is our genuine attitude toward all our sister republics. If ever we should have to interfere in the affairs of any of our neighbors it would only be when we found it impossible longer to refrain from doing so without serious damage following; and even in such case it would only be with the sincere and effective purpose to make our interference beneficial to the peoples concerned. Of course, occupying the position we do, occasions may now and then arise when we can not refrain from such interference, save under penalty of seeing some other strong nation undertake the duty which we neglect; and such neglect would be unfortunate from more than one standpoint. Wherever possible we should gladly give any aid we can to a weaker sister republic which is endeavoring to achieve stability and prosperity. It is an ungenerous thing for us to refuse such aid; and it is foolish not to give it in a way that will make it really effective, and therefore of direct benefit to the people concerned—and of indirect benefit to us, simply because it is a benefit to them. In the last resort, and only in the last resort, it may occasionally be necessary to interfere by exercising what is virtually an international police power, if only to avoid seeing some European power forced to exercise it. In short, while we must interfere always cautiously, and never wantonly, yet, on rare occasions, where the need is great, it may be necessary to interfere, unless we are willing to confess ourselves too feeble for the task that we have undertaken, and to avow that we are willing to surrender it into stronger hands; and such confession and avowal I know my countrymen too well to believe that they will ever make.

AT THE FLORIDA BAPTIST COLLEGE, JACKSONVILLE, FLA., OCTOBER 21, 1905

_Mr. Councilman; Mr. Principal; and you, My Fellow-Citizens_:

It is a very great pleasure to be here this afternoon and say a few words of greeting to you. Let me by way of beginning say a word of special greeting to my comrades of the Grand Army. I had a colored cavalry regiment in my brigade at Santiago, and they did well.

My friends, let me say what a pleasure it has been in driving along the streets to have the Governor and the Mayor point out to me house after house owned by colored citizens, who by their own industry, energy, and thrift had accumulated a small fortune honestly and were spending it wisely. Every good American must be interested in seeing every other American citizen rise, help himself upward, so as to be better able to do his duty by himself and those dependent upon him and by the State at large. It seems to me that it is true of all of us that our duties are even more important than our rights. If we do our duties faithfully in spite of all difficulties, then sooner or later the rights will take care of themselves.

What I say to this body of my colored fellow-citizens is just exactly what I would say to any body of my white fellow-citizens. What we need in this country is typified by what I have been shown to-day as having been done by people of your race. We need education, morality, industry; we need intelligence, clean living, and the power to work hard and effectively. No man interested, as every President must be, in the welfare of all his fellow-Americans, could be otherwise than deeply pleased, not only at the evidences of thrift and prosperity among what must be evidently many hundreds of your number here in this city, as shown by the homes that I have seen, but interested also in seeing an educational institute like this carried on as this institute evidently is carried on. The costliest crop for any community is the crop of ignorance. It is perfectly true that education in mind alone won’t make a good citizen; but it is equally true that you can not get the best citizen without education. We need to have our people of every race educated, as the Principal said in his words of introduction, in heart, mind, and hand; educated so that head and hand can do their several tasks, and so that there shall be behind head and hand also the heart, the conscience, the sense of clean and just living, which make the foundation of all good citizens. This is just as true for the white man as for the colored man. It is true of every man.

I want to say a special word of acknowledgment to the school teachers, men and women alike, who are doing the work of education; and in saying that word I also want to point out this: it is absolutely essential that we should have people do well in the professions; but there is only a limited amount of room in the professions and there is almost an unlimited amount of room in agriculture and in the mechanical trades. Do your very best to develop good teachers, good doctors, to develop good preachers—preachers who shall preach to the colored man as it should be preached to the white man, that “by their fruits you shall know them,” and that the truly religious man is the man who is decent and clean in his private life; who is orderly and law-abiding; the man who hunts down the criminal and does all he can to stop crime and wrong-doing; the man who treats his neighbor well; who is a good man in his own family and therefore a good man in the state. That is what we have a right to expect from the Christian leadership of the churches. All honor to the teacher, to the doctor, to the preacher; but remember that it is impossible that the bulk of any people shall be teachers, or doctors, or lawyers, or preachers. The bulk have got to be men engaged in the trades, as mechanics, as wage-workers, as farmers. Every man who is a good farmer, a thrifty, progressive, saving mechanic, who owns his own house, who is free from debt, and able to bring up his children well, and to keep his wife as she should be kept, is not only a first-class citizen, but is doing a mighty work in helping to uplift his race.

AT MOBILE, ALA., OCTOBER 23, 1905

_Mr. Mayor; My Fellow-Citizens_:

I know that the rest of you will not grudge my saying that most of all I am touched by the sight of the men who wore the gray in the great war, parading here to-day. I have just been presented by Judge Semmes with this beautiful badge. I passed by the statue of Admiral Semmes as we drove up hither. Admiral Semmes had under him on the “Alabama” one of my uncles, and it was another uncle that built the “Alabama.” The Judge’s sister, the Admiral’s daughter, is the wife of that distinguished ex-Confederate who by his rule as Governor of the Philippines has held aloft the record of American rule for integrity, efficiency, and firmness.

In speaking before the citizens of this great seaport of the Gulf I naturally wish to say a word about the Panama Canal. I hold that as a matter of public policy whatever helps part of our country helps the whole; and I did my best to bring about the construction of the canal in the interest of all our people; but if there is any one section to be most benefited by it, it is the section that includes the Gulf States. Originally I had been for the Nicaragua canal; but when Congress acted I abode by the decision of Congress. It became evident that we should either have no canal or the Panama Canal; and I am for a canal. If we had not acted as we have, all chance of building that canal would have vanished for half a century to come; and as it is we now are assured of having that canal within a comparatively short time. Gentlemen, I want to warn you not to be misled by interested clamor. Every man who had to do with bringing about the construction of the canal knows that for decades it was opposed and successfully opposed by great commercial interests which did not wish to see it completed, which did not wish to see a canal speedily dug through the Isthmus and communication between the Atlantic and Pacific established. It seems to me evident from certain things I see in a portion of the daily press that those enemies are still active, and that they are going to try to becloud the issue, with the hope of putting off for ten or fifteen years or over the digging of that canal. Their weapons will be and are every form of misrepresentation. But, gentlemen, they will fail. You need not have the slightest alarm. Uncle Sam has started to dig that canal and it will be dug, and soon. The people who, largely by the circulation of false rumors and by direct misstatement, are seeking to create confusion such as will defer the building of the canal will be disappointed. We have as a people the right to feel genuine satisfaction with the progress that has already been made. Let me point out something of which you here will appreciate the significance: the sanitation of the Isthmus. Do you remember that a couple of years ago men said that you could not dig that canal because yellow fever was epidemic there? We are digging it, and with a cleaner bill of mortality than the Isthmus has ever known before. I am happy to be able to tell you that from information received this very day, I find that those who have just returned from the Isthmus are not only pleased but astonished at the excellent trim in which the project is; that it is going on well, and that it will go along even better in the future.

Of all the things said about me to-day in the over-kind allusions to me, I was especially pleased by what the Colonel said as to my attitude toward crooked public servants. I will take advice about appointing men; but if I find they are crooked I do not take any advice at all about removing them. We have Scriptural authority for saying that “offences must come”; but the Good Book adds, “woe to them through whom they come.” I can not guarantee, and no human being can, that there will not be an occasional man of an improper kind appointed, or an occasional well-meaning man who after being appointed goes wrong; but I can say that every effort within the power of the Government will be made to hunt such a man out of the public service and to punish him to the full extent of the law.

Here in this seaboard city I want to say another word, and that is about the United States Navy. Again, Judge Semmes, in passing by the monument of your illustrious father I felt the thrill of pride that all Americans must feel that the names of the combatants in that famous ship duel are commemorated in the names of the “Kearsarge” and “Alabama” in the United States Navy now, and that if ever they have to go into action they will go into action side by side, manned by Americans, against a common foe. I know that an audience composed as this audience is of men who either themselves fought or whose fathers fought in the Civil War, appreciate to the full the sound national policy (if I may use the vernacular) of never bluffing unless you mean to make good. We undertook to build the Panama Canal because we said that owing to our position and interest and standing we were the only nation that could or should do it. That means that we have got to protect it and police it ourselves. We do not ask anybody else to help us do the work we have allotted to ourselves. We must therefore bring up and keep up our navy to the highest point of efficiency. We can afford to have a small army; although we must insist upon its being kept up to the high point of efficiency that I am glad to say our regular army in its individual units has now attained. In the event of war, however, which I hope will never come, the American people in the future as in the past must on land rely mainly upon its volunteer soldiery. But while it is a comparatively simple task to turn a man of the proper character, physique and intelligence into a good soldier, you can not improvise either a battleship or the crew of a battleship. At sea the battle has to be fought with the ships and the crews that have been prepared before the war begins; and we wish to profit by the lessons of history by seeing that our navy is always kept adequate to our needs. It is not necessary to have a very large navy; but it is necessary that ship for ship it should be just a little the most efficient navy in the world. In battle the shots that count are the shots that hit. There are plenty of gallant fellows who will go down with their ships. That is all right; if there is nothing else to be done, go down with the ships rather than surrender. But try to make the other fellow’s ship go down first! I want our people to feel that in assuming to dig the Isthmian canal, in assuming the position we have assumed as regards this Western Hemisphere and in the Oriental seas, we bind ourselves to keep our navy at such a point of efficiency that there shall be no chance of humiliation at the hands of any foreign foe.

I appreciate immensely this mighty outpouring of people. The Mayor in his most gratifying and touching speech spoke of the fact of our agreement on the fundamental questions, without regard to our differences on what are really matters only of political detail. The things that count are the things upon which we are all agreed and must be all agreed in our civic life. Whether President, Governor, Mayor, Congressman, or State Legislator, there are certain basic principles to which we must prove true if we are to make this country what it shall be made. We can perfectly well afford to differ about the currency or the tariff; but we can not afford to differ about such questions as honesty in public life, decency and cleanliness in private life. Those qualities and others like them go to the root of the whole question of citizenship. I believe in the future of this country; I believe that this great self-governing Republic will rise to a height never even dreamed of by any other nation, because I believe that the average American citizen, North or South, East or West, has the right stuff in him; that the average American citizen has the three fundamental virtues of honesty, courage, and common-sense.

AT THE ALABAMA CONFERENCE FEMALE COLLEGE, TUSKEGEE, ALA.,
OCTOBER 24, 1905

_Mr. Mayor; and you, My Friends and Fellow Americans_: