Chapter VI: Part 6

It is indeed a peculiar pleasure to be here this morning and be greeted as you have greeted me. Mr. Mayor, I feel that those gathered here to greet me symbolize what we most like to think of as typically American in our national life. When you brought me here, Mr. Mayor, I was met on the platform by the pastors of the Methodist and Baptist churches in the shade of an institution of the higher learning, in the presence of these students and of the children of the public schools; while at the same time I see the industries of the nation typified both by cotton being picked as I came up and also by the fact that I am speaking on the most valuable platform I have ever spoken on (cotton bales); and finally, I have as a guard of honor members of the National Guard, whom, as I look at, I feel to be my own comrades, for they are just the type I had in my own regiment in the Spanish war. These elements, as I say, typify what we hope and believe are the elements representing what is most vital in American life: the deep religious feeling of our people, the understanding of our people that material prosperity amounts to nothing if behind it and under it there is not the spiritual sense, the sense of moral obligation, the fealty to an ideal; the realization that in addition we must have, as the foundation of national prosperity, industry, energy, and thrift, and their fruits. There must be devotion to the arts and practices of peace, devotion to civic duty, and yet the readiness of the man who does his duty in civil life to do it in military life if ever the need arises; and finally the recognition of the fact that though a great many crops are important, the most important crop is the crop of children; and the one thing that this Nation can not afford to neglect is the education of the nation of the future. The Nation of the future will rise higher or not just as the boys and girls of the present are or are not trained to do their duty as men and as women. So I take a particular pleasure in being here and greeting the children of the public schools and those past childhood who are studying in this college itself. The one all-essential thing in America, the thing that underlies everything else, is to have the average American a good man or a good woman. If there is any one thing that I respect more than a good man it is a good woman. I think she is just a trifle more useful, and she has a harder time in life; and so she is a little more entitled to our respect than even the best man; and there is not a man here who is worth his salt who does not agree with me. Of course it is a mere truism to say that the ultimate factor in determining the welfare of the nation is the life of the home; that is, the way in which the ordinary man, the ordinary woman, performs his or her ordinary duties of the most sacred and intimate kind. If the man is a good father, a good husband; if he is decent and clean in his domestic life; if he does his duty by his neighbor; if he is the kind of a man whom we are glad to have as a neighbor and to do business with, that man is a good citizen. It is just the same with the woman. If the woman is a good wife and mother, she is a good citizen; and not merely a good citizen, but she is the very best kind of citizen that this country can produce. What we need is not merely desire to perform heroic feats under altogether exceptional circumstances; but the steadfast determination to perform the rather commonplace duties of every day, day by day, as they arise. Speaking broadly, the man who does that is the man whom you can trust if the need for heroism arises. Each of you boys here should remember that the way to fit yourself to be of the utmost possible use is so to act that your family likes to have you at home, instead of feeling a relief when you are gone; and it is the same way with the girl. We all of us know an occasional foolish mother who says, “I have had to work hard; I have had a pretty hard time, my daughter shall not have to work.” That is not kindness to the daughter. It is doing the very worst thing that can be done for her. Do not bring up your boys and girls to be useless, to avoid trouble, to get around trouble, to shirk work. The man or the woman who counts in life is the man or the woman, not who flinches from a task, but who does the task, who overcomes the obstacle. The boy or girl won’t turn out that kind of a man or woman if not brought up in that spirit from the beginning.

AT TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, TUSKEGEE, ALA., OCTOBER 24, 1905

_Mr. Washington; Friends, and Pupils of Tuskegee Institute_:

To the white population as well as to the black, it is of the utmost importance that the negro be encouraged to make himself a citizen of the highest type of usefulness. It is to the interest of the white people that this policy be conscientiously pursued, and to the interest of the colored people that they clearly realize that they have opportunities for economic development here in the South not now offered elsewhere. Within the last twenty years the industrial operations of the South have increased so tremendously that there is a scarcity of labor almost everywhere; so that it is the part of wisdom for all who wish the prosperity of the South to help the negro to become in the highest degree useful to himself, and therefore to the community in which he lives. The South has always depended, and now depends, chiefly upon her native population for her work. Therefore in view of the scarcity not only of common labor, but of skilled labor, it becomes doubly important to train every available man to be of the utmost use, by developing his intelligence, his skill, and his capacity for conscientious effort. Hence the work of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute is a matter of the highest practical importance to both the white man and the black man, and well worth the support of both races alike in the South and in the North. Your fifteen hundred students are not only being educated in head and heart, but also trained to industrial efficiency, for from the beginning Tuskegee has placed especial emphasis upon the training of men and women in agriculture, mechanics, and household duties, Training in these three fundamental directions does not embrace all that the negro, or any other race, needs, but it does cover in a very large degree the field in which the negro can at present do most for himself and be most helpful to his white neighbors. Every black man who leaves this institute better able to do mechanical or industrial work adds by so much to the wealth of the whole community and benefits all people in the community. The professional and mercantile avenues to success are overcrowded; for the present the best chance of success awaits the intelligent worker at some mechanical trade or on a farm; for this man will almost certainly achieve industrial independence. I am pleased, but not in the least surprised, to learn that many among the men and women trained at Tuskegee find immediate employment as leaders and workers among their own people, and that their services are eagerly sought by white people for various kinds of industrial work, the demand being much greater than the supply. Viewed from any angle, ignorance is the costliest crop that can be raised in any part of this Union. Every dollar put into the education of either white man or black man, in head, in hand, and in heart, yields rich dividends to the entire community. Merely from the economic standpoint it is of the utmost consequence to all our citizens that institutions such as this at Tuskegee should be a success. But there are other and even higher reasons that entitle it to our support. In the interest of humanity, of justice, and of self-protection, every white man in America, no matter where he lives, should try to help the negro to help himself. It is in the interest and for the protection of the white man to see that the negro is educated. It is not only the duty of the white man, but it is to his interest, to see that the negro is protected in property, in life, and in all his legal rights. Every time a law is broken, every individual in the community has the moral tone of his life lowered. Lawlessness in the United States is not confined to any one section; lynching is not confined to any one section; and there is perhaps no body of American citizens who have deserved so well of the entire American people as the public men, the publicists, the clergymen, the countless thousands of high-minded private citizens, who have done such heroic work in the South in arousing public opinion against lawlessness in all its forms, and especially against lynching. I very earnestly hope that their example will count in the North as well as in the South, for there are just as great evils to be warred against in one region of our country as in another, though they are not in all places the same evils. And when any body of men in any community stands bravely for what is right, these men not merely serve a useful purpose in doing the particular task to which they set themselves, but give a lift to the cause of good citizenship throughout the Union. I heartily appreciate what you have done at Tuskegee; and I am sure you will not grudge my saying that it could not possibly have been done save for the loyal support you have received from the white people round about; for during the twenty-five years of effort to educate the black man here in the midst of a white community of intelligence and culture, there has never been an outbreak between the races, or any difficulty of any kind. All honor is due to the white men of Alabama, to the white men of Tuskegee, for what they have done. And right here let me say that if in any community a misunderstanding between the races arises, over any matter, infinitely the best way out is to have a prompt, frank and full conference and consultation between representatives of the wise, decent, cool-headed men among the whites and the wise, decent, cool-headed colored men. Such a conference will always tend to bring about a better understanding, and will be a great help all round.

Hitherto I have spoken chiefly of the obligations existing on the part of the white man. Now let you remember on the other hand that no help can permanently avail you save as you yourselves develop capacity for self-help. You young colored men and women educated at Tuskegee must by precept and example lead your fellows toward sober, industrious, law-abiding lives. You are in honor bound to join hands in favor of law and order and to war against all crime, and especially against all crime by men of your own race; for the heaviest wrong done by the criminal is the wrong to his own race. You must teach the people of your race that they must scrupulously observe any contract into which they in good faith enter, no matter whether it is hard to keep or not. If you save money, secure homes, become taxpayers, and lead clean, decent, modest lives, you will win the respect of your neighbors of both races. Let each man strive to excel his fellows only by rendering substantial service to the community in which he lives. The colored people have many difficulties to pass through, but these difficulties will be surmounted if only the policy of reason and common-sense is pursued. You have made real and great progress. According to the census the colored people of this country own and pay taxes upon something like three hundred million dollars’ worth of property, and have blotted out over fifty per cent of their illiteracy. What you have done in the past is an indication of what you will be able to accomplish in the future under wise leadership. Moral and industrial education is what is most needed, in order that this progress may continue. The race can not expect to get everything at once. It must learn to wait and bide its time; to prove itself worthy by showing its possession of perseverance, of thrift, of self-control. The destiny of the race is chiefly in its own hands, and must be worked out patiently and persistently along these lines. Remember also that the white man who can be of most use to the colored man is that colored man’s neighbor. It is the Southern people themselves who must and can solve the difficulties that exist in the South; of course what help the people of the rest of the Union can give them must and will be gladly and cheerfully given. The hope of advancement for the colored man in the South lies in his steady, common-sense effort to improve his moral and material condition, and to work in harmony with the white man in upbuilding the Commonwealth. The future of the South now depends upon the people of both races living up to the spirit and letter of the laws of their several States and working out the destinies of both races, not as races, but as law-abiding American citizens.

AT THE CAPITOL BUILDING, MONTGOMERY, ALA., OCTOBER 24, 1905

_Governor; Colonel Wiley; My Fellow-Citizens_:

My friends and fellow-citizens, think what a privilege ours is; think what it means for this nation; that there is no place in this Union where the President of the Union can feel more at home, can feel more that he is indeed the President of all the Union, of a reunited and indissoluble Union, than here under the shadow of the first capitol of the Confederacy. Poor indeed would be the soul of the man who did not leave Montgomery a better American than he came into it, after being received as I have been received to-day.

In speaking to all of you I know that the younger—those of my own age and younger still—will not grudge my saying a special word of greeting to the veterans of the great war. Here again think how fortunate we are. There is no other people of which history tells, which, having passed through such a war as we passed through, after forty years finds not only that the flag which had been rent in sunder is once again whole without a seam; finds all the people challenging as theirs the right to claim their part in the heritage of glory bequeathed to every American, alike by the Americans who wore the blue and the Americans who wore the gray in the great Civil War. In coming to your mighty and beautiful State, with its wealth of agriculture, its wealth of manufactures, I am more than ever impressed by the solidarity of our interests as a people. As the Governor pointed out, the greatest and most important single export of our people is the export of cotton; and the whole nation is concerned in the welfare of the cotton growers. It is not only important for Alabama and the rest of the Gulf States; it is important for the entire Union, because it is the cotton crop which determines the balance of trade as being in favor of this Nation. The business of any part of this Nation is the business of the entire Nation; and the National Government is bound to do everything it can in the interest of the cotton growers; to preserve your markets; to do everything that can possibly be done to see that the natural demand for cotton abroad is kept up and is met here under fair conditions by our own people. Perhaps no State in the Union is more interested than this in the performance of what is to be the greatest engineering feat the world has yet seen—the building of the Isthmian canal. The cotton crop largely goes to Asia. The canal will of course immensely shorten the water route to Asia. Our influence in the Orient must be kept at such a pitch as will ensure our being able to guarantee fair treatment to our merchants and manufacturers by China. We must insist upon having fair treatment; and as a step toward getting it we must give fair treatment in return. I would demand that on ethical grounds alone; I would demand it also on grounds of self-interest.

Now I want to say a word about the children. Nothing pleases me more than to see the care you are devoting to education in this State; and among the many splendidly heroic deeds credited to the Southern people in peace as well as in war is the fact of having to face, as they did, the future in the midst of a broken and war-swept country, they not only built up their industrial prosperity, but they have provided steadily for the education of the coming generation.

The successful performance of political duty depends absolutely upon the successful performance of domestic, of social, duty. There never can be, there never will be a good government in which the average citizen is not a decent man in private life. It is a contradiction in terms to speak of a good government if the good government does not rest upon cleanliness and decency in the home, respect of husband and wife for one another, tenderness of the man for those dependent upon him, performance of duty by woman and by man, and the proper education of the children who are to make the next generation. The vital things in life are the things that foolish people look upon as commonplace. The vital deeds of life are those things which it lies within the reach of each of us to do, and the failure to perform which means the destruction of the State.

AT BIRMINGHAM, ALA., OCTOBER 24, 1905

_Mr. Rhodes; and you, My Fellow-Citizens_:

I wish to say that I am stirred most deeply by this magnificent reception from what Mr. Rhodes has so well called the Magic City of the South. Alabama has made a wonderful record. At the close of the war, shattered, war-swept, it seemed that it was impossible for her people, in the grip of poverty as they were, to rally; and any people less strong than you of Alabama would have failed; but you had the stuff in you and you succeeded. About the year 1880 the tide turned, and the last quarter of a century has seen in Alabama a progress that would have been absolutely impossible in any other age or in any other nation than ours. The agriculture of the State went upward by leaps and bounds; but even more marvelous was your mechanical and industrial success. You have in this State coal and iron, the two basic elements in modern industrialism, and you have also a wealth of water power only partially used; and given that amount of natural resources and the right type of man to use them, the result will be what we have seen. But there is something that is ahead of any kind of natural resources, and that is the citizenship of the man on the soil. Proud though I am of your extraordinary industrial prosperity, I am prouder yet of the men who have achieved it.

Think what it means for our nation to have the President of the United States greeted as he has been to-day, with on his right and his left hand as the guard of honor the veterans of the Civil War, the men who wore the blue, the men who wore the gray, united forever.

As I came up the street nothing pleased me as much as the sight of the school-children drawn up alongside the line of march. Remember that we shall leave this country in the hands of the children of to-day, and that the American of to-morrow will be what we train the boy or girl to be. If the children are not well educated, if they are not brought up as they should be, the State will go down. We of this generation have received a splendid heritage from you men of the years of ’60 to ’65. Honor to us if we treat your great deeds as spurring us onward; and shame to us if we treat your great deeds as excuses for our own idleness or folly. When I speak of education I do not mean only education in intelligence. That counts tremendously; but education in character counts more. It is character that determines the Nation’s progress in the long run.

In the organizations of veterans after the Civil War each hails the other as comrade. It makes no difference whether the man was a lieutenant-general or whether he was the youngest recruit that served at the very end of the war. All that is asked is, did he do his duty in the place in which he was. If he did, you are for him. If he did not, you have no comradeship with him. I ask that the same lesson that you of the Civil War applied practically in your own persons during and since that war be applied by the rest of us in civil life. I ask that we scorn alike the base arrogance of the rich man who would look down on his poorer brother and the equally base envy of the poor man who would hate his richer brother; and that you apply to every citizen of this Republic just this one test—the test that gauges his worth as a man. Does he do his duty fairly by himself, his family, his neighbor, and the State and the Nation? If he does, be for him, whether he is rich or poor, because if you do not you are recreant in the spirit of Americanism.

REMARKS ON BEING PRESENTED WITH TWO CONFEDERATE BADGES, AT
BIRMINGHAM, ALA., OCTOBER 24, 1905

_Ladies; General_:

I accept the two badges in the spirit in which they are offered; for your spirit here is that we are now indeed and forever reunited under the flag of the indissoluble Union; and that henceforth the only rivalry between the man whose father fought in the Union army and the man whose father fought in the Confederate army will be the generous rivalry of seeing who can do most for our common country.

AT CITY PARK, LITTLE ROCK, ARK., OCTOBER 25, 1905

_Governor; Judge Trieber, and you, My Fellow-Citizens_:

I am fortunate enough to have spoken all over the Union, and I have never said in any State or any section what I would not have said in any other State or in any other section. I am fortunate in being President of a nation where you do not have to praise one State by running down any other State. Arkansas, the New England States, the Western, the Eastern, the Northern, the Southern—they are all good States and I am for them all. The thing that has impressed me most as I have gone through this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian border to the Gulf, has been not the superficial differences of our people, but the essential likenesses of our people. The average American is a pretty good fellow; and all that is necessary, as you men of the honor guard, you men of the blue and gray know, is that he should know the other average American and they will get on all right. That is true as regards locality and locality, and true as regards occupation and occupation. Thank heaven, we are free now from all danger of sectional antagonism! We must now see that there never comes any spirit of class antagonism in this country, any spirit of hostility between capitalist and wage-worker, between employer and employed; and we can avoid the upgrowth of any such feeling by remembering always to treat each man on his worth as a man. Do not hold it for him or against him that he is either rich or poor. If he is a crooked man and rich, hold it against him, not because he is rich, but because he is crooked. If he is not a rich man and crooked, hold it against him, still because he is crooked. If he is a square man, no matter how much or how little money he has, stand by him because he is a square man. Distrust more than any other man in this Republic the man who would try to teach Americans to substitute loyalty to any class for loyalty to the whole American people. Republics have flourished before now, and have fallen; and they have usually fallen because there arose within them parties that represented either the unscrupulous rich or the unscrupulous poor, and that persuaded the majority of the people to substitute loyalty to the one class for loyalty to the people as a whole.

Remember that the rancorous envy that hates the rich is only one side of the shield whose obverse is the insolence and arrogance that looks down on the poor. The two qualities are fundamentally the same. They only differ in their manifestations because it happens that the man showing one is in a different position from the man showing the other. You show me a rich man who is arrogant and insolent in his disregard of the man of less means, and I tell you that same man, if he loses his wealth, will want to plunder every rich man. In the same way the man who preaches the gospel of hate and envy toward his fellows who are better off, if he becomes better off will oppress the men whom he once championed. Distrust the man who would persuade you that he would do you good by trying to do any other man harm. The man who is true to you will ultimately be the man who is true to the great fundamental principles of righteousness. In public life the man who seeks to persuade you that he will benefit you by wronging any one else, if the chance arises, will surely try to benefit himself by wronging you. What as a nation we need is to stand by the eternal, immutable principles of right and decency, the principle of fair dealing as between man and man, the principles that teach us to regard virtue with respect and vice with abhorrence wherever either the virtue or the vice may be found. If we substitute for the line that divides the decent man from the man who is not decent, the line dividing the rich man from the poor man, or the line making any other artificial division, we will have done irreparable wrong to the Nation itself.

Governor, you spoke of a hideous crime that is often hideously avenged. The worst enemy of the negro race is the negro criminal, and, above all, the negro criminal of that type; for he has committed not only an unspeakably dreadful and infamous crime against the victim, but he has committed a hideous crime against the people of his own color; and every reputable colored man, every colored man who wishes to see to the uplifting of his race, owes it as his first duty to himself and to that race to hunt down that criminal with all his soul and strength. Now for the side of the white man. To avenge one hideous crime by another hideous crime is to reduce the man doing it to the bestial level of the wretch who committed the bestial crime. The horrible effects of lynch law are shown in the fact that three-fourths of the lynchings are not for that crime at all, but for other crimes. And above all other men, Governor, you and I and all who are exponents and representatives of the law, owe it to our people, owe it to the cause of civilization and humanity, to do everything in our power, officially and unofficially, directly and indirectly, to free the United States from the menace and reproach of lynch law.

We can afford to be divided on questions of mere partisanship; they do not make any real difference compared to other questions. The questions of currency or the tariff are of no consequence compared to the fundamental questions, the questions upon which all good Americans should be one—the questions of decency in the life of the home and of honesty in public life. It makes very little difference in the long run whether it is a Democrat or a Republican who is President, compared to the importance of honesty and broad patriotism; it makes all the difference in the world that we shall have all our public officials honest, clean men, earnest to serve their countrymen wherever they may live. The candidate is the candidate of a party; but if the President is worth his salt he is the President of the whole people. Remember, the stream does not rise any higher than its source. You can not have good public life unless you have as a basis good private life. The country is going to be all right if the average man is decent and clean in his home life; if he is a good husband, a good father, a good son; if he does his duty by his neighbor; if he is the kind of a man you are glad to have as a neighbor and glad to do business with. If that man is the average American, America is going to continue to be all right; and if the average goes below that you can not make the country right.

I have great respect for a good man. There is only one person I respect more, and that is a good woman; and if there is any man here who does not agree with me I do not think much of him. The foundation of our happiness and well-being lies in the preservation of the typical American home, the kind of home in which you veterans of the Civil War were raised, so that when you went to battle, on whichever side you fought, you had the memory of what your fathers and mothers had taught you to rest upon and to live up to. We of the younger generation—my comrades of the National Guard here and all of our time—inherited from these older men of the heroic days, these men of the great Civil War, this splendid country of ours; we inherited our position in the world. Let us see to it that we leave to our children unimpaired and improved the heritage we received from our fathers. Shame to us if we treat the great deeds of the men of the past as excuses for laziness, or idleness, or shirking of duty on our part. Let us treat these great deeds as an incentive, as a spur; let us feel that we should hang our heads if we do not prove ourselves worthy representatives of the men who are before us—you men of the South here, whose heroism and valor for four years of war have been wellnigh surpassed by the heroism and valor you have displayed in the forty years of peace following it. Let us go on with the work of the material upbuilding of this country; and at the same time remember that, vital though it is to have a good foundation of material well-being, yet it is only the foundation and upon it must be built the superstructure of the moral and spiritual higher life of the Nation. We all honor you men of the Civil War here, you men of the blue and men of the gray. We honor you because when the call to arms came you treated material considerations as dross to be cast aside, not to be for one moment weighed in the balance, compared to the proud privilege of laying down everything, life itself, on the altar of your duty as light was given you to see your duty. Let us have that same spirit deep in our heart.

AT THE LUNCHEON AT LITTLE ROCK, ARK., OCTOBER 25, 1905

_Mr. Toastmaster; Judge Rose; My Hosts_:

Let me at the outset say a word of thanks to the Arkansas Consistory for its generous hospitality, and say how much I appreciate it.

I want to say just one word suggested by the fact that Judge Rose was President of the American Bar Association and stands to-day as one of that group of eminent American citizens, eminent for their services to the whole country, whom we know as the leaders of the American bar. I want to speak as a layman about certain services that the learned profession, of which Judge Rose is so eminent a member, can render to an even greater degree than they now render to the American people. I know that there is a good deal of distrust, rightly, for the layman who speaks of law or of theology. But I am going to say just a few words on a matter that concerns good citizenship, in which the layman has a right to expect leadership both from lawyer and from theologian. Very naturally in any profession there come to be men who treat the profession as an end instead of as a means (I am not now speaking from the standpoint of the individual, but from the standpoint of the Nation, of the State). Just as we have a right to judge the man of religious profession by the output that comes as a result of that profession, so we have a right to expect from the great profession of the law, from that which is perhaps the leading among the liberal lay professions, a peculiar quantity and quality of service to the public. There are certain abuses in connection with our whole system of law to-day which the laymen can not remedy, but which I earnestly hope that the men of the law will themselves remedy. I speak merely to my fellow laymen and invite correction. I am speaking before Gamaliel, and shall expect correction from Gamaliel if I go wrong. But our law comes down from the time when the state, the government, was all-powerful as compared to the individual; when the government acted as a plaintiff and it was necessary that every possible safeguard should be thrown around the defendant, that he should be given every chance, and the fear of injustice was a synonym for fear of injustice to the private citizen against whom the state proceeded. It comes from a time, if my memory of history is right, when about five per cent of any given number of children born in England were punished by hanging, when people were hanged for the most trivial offences, and when all the machinery of the law was in the hands of the government and directed against the individual; so that the one thing that had to be done was to protect the individual. Circumstances in the past three or four centuries have wholly changed; but the law has not changed nearly as rapidly or completely. At present there is not the slightest question as to the individual’s rights being preserved. They are amply guarded. Of course there is the possibility of error in every human affair; but speaking generally, the man accused of criminal wrong, especially the man accused of criminal wrong against the public, has every possible chance secured him; but the public has by no means the chance it ought to have. No greater service is being rendered the American public to-day than by those members of the legal profession whose great good fortune it has been to stand forth as prominently identified with the prosecution of crimes against the state. When I say crimes against the state I not only refer to crimes like those of bribery and corruption committed by any public official, but I mean such a crime as murder, as any similar hideous misdeed, where the offence is not merely against the individual, but against the entire community. It is right to remember the interests of the individual, but it is right also to remember the interests of that great mass of individuals embodied in the public, in the government. It is unfortunate that we have permitted practices that were necessary three hundred years ago for the protection of innocent people to be elaborated, to be perverted, so that they become a means for allowing criminals to escape the punishment of their criminality. We urgently need in this country methods for expediting punishment, methods for doing away with delay, methods which will secure to the public an even chance with the criminal. I do not ask any more; if we can get an average of just fifty per cent of the criminals we will be pretty nearly all right; for that will give the public an even chance with the criminal whose offence is against the public. At present the right of appeal is in certain cases so abused as to make it a matter of the utmost difficulty to ultimately punish a man sufficiently rich or sufficiently influential to command really good legal talent. I am speaking of what I know, for I am speaking with very keenly in my mind experiences during the past three years in trying to get at certain public offenders who have been indicted, and some of whom it has been almost impossible to get into the jurisdiction of the courts in Washington in order to try them. There are others whose cases are still on appeal who profit by interminable delays. I feel that the man who offends against the state occupies a position rather worse than that of any other criminal, from the very fact that he is a man who attacks everybody instead of just one person, so that it is not the special business of any one to get at him. In consequence, if he can keep the forces of justice at bay long enough—if he can secure one or two mistrials—gradually the popular interest evaporates and the criminal gets off.

As the Judge has so well said, the minute a man becomes President he ceases being the President of a party and is the President of every man, woman, and child within the confines of the Nation. But I permit myself one particular bit of party discrimination. I am just a trifle more intent on punishing the Republican offender than the Democrat; because he is my own scoundrel, and I feel a certain sense of responsibility for him, and I intend to discharge that responsibility if I can. Of course, as we all know, offences must come; but I have endeavored to carry out the Scriptural injunction and to make it a matter of woe unto him by whom they come. I am happy to say that we have a reasonable proportion of the offenders in question with stripes on; but not up to the fifty per cent average that I would like; and I want to go a little further than we have yet gone.

If the law is reasonably speedy and reasonably sure it takes away one great excuse for lawlessness. If some horrible crime is committed and the people feel that under the best circumstances there will be an indefinite delay in the punishment of the criminal, and that the punishment will be uncertain even when the time for administering it comes, then a premium is put upon that kind of law-breaking which more than any other is a menace to the law. Long delays of justice, abuses of the pardoning power, the sluggishness with which either court or attorney moves; all of those things count in bringing about the condition of affairs which produces lynch law.

Now, a layman can do but little more than to give utterance to the feeling that so many laymen have. I earnestly hope that the bench and the bar of the United States will in all proper ways see to it that the customs—for some of these things of which I complain are merely customs and not laws—inherited from the past when conditions were totally different, shall not be perverted so as to wrong the whole public by giving the criminal an advantage to which he is not entitled, and that some substantial improvement shall be made in the direction of securing greater expedition and greater certainty in the administration of justice, and especially in the administration of criminal justice.

TO A DELEGATION OF THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC, AT NEW ORLEANS, LA.,
OCTOBER 26, 1905

_Comrades_:

I want to thank you for coming here to greet me. I can not say how much it means to me to be greeted as I have been greeted by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray in this trip through the Southland. At Little Rock my escort was composed of Union and Confederate soldiers, riding side by side, in pairs.

As I said at Richmond, second only to the man who wore the blue, I hold the man who wore the gray, and we should indeed consider ourselves fortunate as a Nation that, forty years after the Civil War, we find all of our people can challenge as the possession of all every memory of valor left by both sides in the great contest. Now we know but one rivalry—the rivalry to see which of us can do most for the flag of a united country.

TO A DELEGATION OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS, AT NEW ORLEANS, LA.,
OCTOBER 26, 1905

_Gentlemen: Rather, if you will allow one who took part in a very small war to call you so, Comrades_:

I accept your gift with pleasure. Although sometimes we have difficulties in this country that we have to battle against, and sometimes things that we are not quite satisfied with, yet we are pretty good people. I have felt this almost as never before during the past weeks. Now think what it means in a Nation for the President of that Nation, forty years after one of the greatest wars of all time, to be able to come and speak as I spoke in the capital of the Southern Confederacy, and to feel that I was addressing a people as loyal to the flag of our reunited country as can be found in this broad land of ours.

I passed in the shadow of the monument of Admiral Semmes in Mobile—under whom one of my uncles fired the last gun that was discharged from the “Alabama,” which another uncle built. The daughter of that admiral is now the wife of our Governor in the Philippines.

Gentlemen, this is an honor I appreciate. I thank you not only for the gift and the words which accompany it, but for the spirit which lies behind the words.

AT THE LUNCHEON, NEW ORLEANS, LA., OCTOBER 26, 1905

_Governor; Mr. Mayor; and You, My Hosts_:

Let me, at the outset, express through you my profound gratitude, my deeply moved appreciation of the way in which the people of New Orleans and of Louisiana have greeted me to-day. Gentlemen, no President of the United States could be greeted as I have been greeted to-day and not go back to take up the duties of his office with a stronger and more earnest purpose to try faithfully to represent all the people whom he serves. And, Governor, as you have so well said, when a man is President, when he holds any public office, questions of a merely partisan character sink into absolute insignificance compared with the mighty questions upon which all good Americans should be united.

And now, gentlemen, as you have greeted me so well, you have given me the opportunity to indulge myself in a luxury. There have been moments in the past when I was afraid of saying how well I thought of the Senators and Representatives in the National Congress from Louisiana for fear I might damage them! I did not know but that, may be, the best service I could do them was to keep still about my feeling for them. Now, I am emboldened by your generous kindness and confidence to say that it has been indeed a pleasure to deal with Louisiana’s representatives in the Senate and in the Lower House of Congress, because whenever I had to do with a great question of national importance I could go to them, convinced that if I could show them that it was really for the good of the Nation they would stand for it. That is all I ask of any man. I do not want any Senator or any Congressman to vote for anything I favor just because I favor it; but I do not want him to vote against it just because I favor it. There have been certain very worthy men in both Houses of Congress among the colleagues of the Louisiana representatives who instantly strove to prevent the realization of their most cherished projects as soon as I strove to bring it about! Now, from the representatives of Louisiana I was sure of support in such matters, whether it was a question of building up and keeping at a high point of efficiency the United States Navy, or whether it was a question of building the Panama Canal. And mind you, gentlemen, the two things go together. One thing that, as President of this country, I will not do, is to make a bluff that I can not make good. I do not intend, on behalf of the Nation, to take any position until I have carefully thought out whether that position will be advantageous to the Nation, but if I take it I am going to keep it, and I am going to keep it no matter what outsider goes the other way. And I am sure that you, gentlemen, know that it has been an utter mistake to think of me as a man desirous of seeing this Nation quarrelsome; this Nation eager to get into trouble. I have no respect either for the nation or for the individual that brawls, that invites trouble. I want to see this Nation do as the individual men in the Nation, who respect themselves, should do, that is be scrupulously regardful of the rights of others and honestly endeavor to avoid all cause of difficulty with any one. But I want, on behalf of this Nation, the peace that comes, not to the coward who cringes for it, but to the just man armed who asks it as a right.

Listening to the greeting of the Governor and the Mayor this afternoon, I felt at once very proud and very humble. I have been greeted with words far above my worth, far above what is merited by what I have done. (Cries of “No, No!”) I did not say that for the purpose of asking your dissent from it. I do not say anything unless I mean it, and I do not say anything to flatter any audience or speak well of them unless I think well of them, and would speak well of them anywhere.

I come down to see you of this State and city with a heart full of gratitude to you for having displayed, through the trials of the hard summer that has passed, those qualities of heroism which we like to think of as distinctly American. Gentlemen, in coming among you this afternoon, I have the feeling of a man who, having been at headquarters, but not in action, goes to see a regiment that has been in action. I know that you understand, gentlemen, that the Governor and Mayor, at any time during the past summer, had but to request my presence, and I would have come down here at once, at any time when I could have been of the slightest assistance to you in the magnificent struggle you were waging. I wish to express the profound appreciation and gratitude of all Americans toward you, our fellow-Americans, who have borne the heat and burden of the contest during the long day that is now passing. In actual war there can be no greater or more effective heroism than was shown by those who stayed here at their posts; by those who, being away, came back; and by those who, having planned to go away, instantly gave up going away and stayed here to aid in the fight for their fellows in distress. You have had your martyrs, among them my lamented friend, Archbishop Chappelle; but you have also your proud memories of service rendered, and the thrill that comes with the victory you have already won. I have been both amused and irritated at the criticisms sometimes made on you, by people who lived in other communities that were not in danger. Among the younger men here are some who when younger still have played football, and they will remember how very much easier it was to play the game from the side lines than on the field. Now, Louisiana and New Orleans, this summer, did what, so far as I remember, has never before been done in the case of a similar epidemic of yellow fever in the United States. They took hold of it after it had started and when it had got well under way, and they controlled and conquered it without waiting for the frost to come. The highest gratitude is due to the officials of the State, to the officials of the city, and to the private individuals, clergymen, educators, philanthropists, and business men, who have spent their time and money and risked their lives freely in organizing and achieving success. It was the greatest privilege to me to contribute what I was able to the work. Mr. Mayor, Governor, you can hardly realize the pleasure I felt when a request was made upon me that gave me the chance of doing something for you; and I am glad to find how well you think of the work that was done by the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service under Dr. White. It gives me pleasure now to announce that in response to the request of the Governor and Mayor I have told them that Dr. White shall be detailed down here just as long as his services are needed. Now, just one word of warning to you, Dr. White. We have excellent Scriptural authority for the statement that it is well to beware when all men speak well of you; because it is an unfortunate feature of human nature that when they have appreciated a man up to the very last limit, they tend to go a little bit the other way, after a while. The time when one is praised very much is the time one should walk guardedly and carefully and work with all one’s soul and strength. Gentlemen, that applies to Presidents quite as much as to doctors!

The Governor spoke of the Panama Canal. It is a very big work, and it is only a very big nation that can do that kind of work. I expect soon to have a report from the engineers as to the exact shape the work will take. I will then be able to make more definite forecasts as to the time, but of this I can assure you, the work will be done well, it will be done as speedily as possible, and it will absolutely and surely be done.

One more point: New Orleans and Louisiana are vitally interested in the levee system. The Mississippi, which flows through the State, drains portions of twenty odd other States, and the control of that river must, in my opinion, be, in good part, a national object. The National Government now does something toward the erection and care of the levees. In my judgment it should do not only more, but very much more.