 | Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 |  |
V
AT BANGOR, MAINE, AUGUST 27, 1902
My fellow-citizens:
I am glad to greet the farmers of Maine. During the
century that has closed, the growth of industrialism has
necessarily meant that cities and towns have increased in
population more rapidly than the country districts. And
yet it remains true now, as it always has been, that in
the last resort the country districts are those in which we
are surest to find the old American spirit, the old American
habits of thought and ways of living. Conditions
have changed in the country far less than they have
changed in the cities, and in consequence there has been
little breaking away from the methods of life which have
produced the great majority of the leaders of the republic
in the past. Almost all of our great Presidents have been
brought up in the country, and most of them worked
hard on the farms in their youth and got their early mental
training in the healthy democracy of farm life.
The forces which made these farm-bred boys leaders of
men when they had come to their full manhood are still
at work in our country districts. Self-help and individual
initiative remain to a peculiar degree typical of life in the
country, life on a farm, in the lumbering camp, on a
ranch. Neither the farmers nor their hired hands can
work through combinations as readily as the capitalists
or wage workers of cities can work.
It must not be understood from this that there has
is the case. There has been much change, much progress,
The granges and similar organizations, the farmers' institutes,
and all the agencies which promote intelligent cooperation
and give opportunity for social and intellectual
intercourse among the farmers, have played a large part
in raising the level of life and work in the country districts.
In the domain of government, the Department
of Agriculture since its foundation has accomplished results
as striking as those obtained under any other branch
of the national administration. By scientific study of all
matters connected with the advancement of farm life; by
experimental stations; by the use of trained agents, sent
to the uttermost countries of the globe; by the practical
application of anything which in theory has been demonstrated
to be efficient; in these ways, and in many others,
great good has been accomplished in raising the standard
of productiveness in farm work throughout the country.
We live in an era when the best results can only be
achieved, if to individual self-help we add the mutual
self-help which comes by combination, both of citizens in
their individual capacity and of citizens working through
the State as an instrument. The farmers of the country
have grown more and more to realize this, and farming
has tended more and more to take its place as an applied
science—though as with everything else the theory must
be tested in practical work and can avail only when applied
in practical fashion.
But after all this has been said it remains true that the
countryman,—the man on the farm, more than any other
of our citizens to-day, is called upon continually to exercise
the qualities which we like to think of as typical of
the United States throughout its history—the qualities
of rugged independence, masterful resolution, and individual
energy and resourcefulness. He works hard (for
which no man is to be pitied), and often he lives hard
healthy surroundings, surroundings which tend to develop
a fine type of citizenship. In the country, moreover, the
conditions are fortunately such as to allow a closer touch
between man and man than, too often, we find to be the
case in the city. Men feel more vividly the underlying
sense of brotherhood, of community of interest. I do
not mean by this that there are not plenty of problems
connected with life in our rural districts. There are many
problems; and great wisdom and earnest disinterestedness
in effort are needed for their solution.
After all, we are one people, with the same fundamental
characteristics, whether we live in the city or in the country,
in the east or in the west, in the north or in the south.
Each of us, unless he is contented to be a cumberer of
the earth's surface, must strive to do his life-work with
his whole heart. Each must remember that while he will
be noxious to every one unless he first do his duty by
himself, he must also strive ever to do his duty by his
fellow. The problem of how to do these duties is acute
everywhere. It is most acute in great cities, but it exists
in the country too. A man, to be a good citizen, must
first be a good breadwinner, a good husband, a good
father—I hope the father of many healthy children; just
as a woman's first duty is to be a good housewife and
mother. The business duties, the home duties, the duties
to one's family, come first. The couple who bring up
plenty of healthy children, who leave behind them many
sons and daughters fitted in their turn to be good citizens,
emphatically deserve well of the State.
But duty to one's self and one's family does not exclude
duty to one's neighbor. Each of us, rich or poor,
can help his neighbor at times; and to do this-he must be
brought into touch with him, into sympathy with him.
Any effort is to be welcomed that brings people closer
together, so as to secure a better understanding among
apart. Probably the good done is almost equally great
on both sides, no matter which one may seem to be helping
the other. But it must be kept in mind that no good
will be accomplished at all by any philanthropic or charitable
work, unless it is done along certain definite lines.
In the first place, if the work is done in a spirit of condescension
it would be better never to attempt it. It is
almost as irritating to be patronized as to be wronged.
The only safe way of working is to try to find out some
scheme by which it is possible to make a common effort
for the common good. Each of us needs at times to
have a helping hand stretched out to him or her. Every
one of us slips on some occasion, and shame to his fellow
who then refuses to stretch out the hand that should
always be ready to help the man who stumbles. It is
our duty to lift him up; but it is also our duty to remember
that there is no earthly use in trying to carry him. If
a man will submit to being carried, that is sufficient to
show that he is not worth carrying. In the long run, the
only kind of help that really avails is the help which
teaches a man to help himself. Such help every man
who has been blessed in life should try to give to those
who are less fortunate, and such help can be accepted
with entire self-respect.
The aim to set before ourselves in trying to aid one
another is to give that aid under conditions which will
harm no man's self-respect and which will teach the less
fortunate how to help themselves as their stronger brothers
do. To give such aid it is necessary not only to possess
the right kind of heart, but also the right kind of head.
Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful
whether, in the long run, it works more damage than
softness of head. At any rate, both are undesirable.
The prerequisite to doing good work in the field of philanthropy—in
the field of social effort, undertaken with
undertaken in a spirit of broad sanity no less than of
broad and loving charity.
The other day I picked up a little book called The
Simple Life, written by an Alsatian, Charles Wagner,
and he preaches such wholesome, sound doctrine that I
wish it could be used as a tract throughout our country.
To him the whole problem of our complex, somewhat
feverish modern life can be solved only by getting men
and women to lead better lives. He sees that the permanence
of liberty and democracy depends upon a majority
of the people being steadfast in morality and in that
good plain sense which as a national attribute comes only
as the result of the slow and painful labor of centuries,
and which can be squandered in a generation by the
thoughtlessness and vicious. He preaches the doctrine
of the superiority of the moral to the material. He does
not undervalue the material, but he insists, as we of this
nation should always insist, upon the infinite superiority
of the moral, and the sordid destruction which comes
upon either the nation or the individual if it or he becomes
absorbed only in the desire to get wealth. The
true line of cleavage lies between good citizen and bad
citizen; and the line of cleavage may, and often does, run
at right angles to that which divides the rich and the poor.
The sinews of virtue lie in man's capacity to care for what
is outside himself. The man who gives himself up to the
service of his appetites, the man who the more goods he
has the more he wants, has surrendered himself to destruction.
It makes little difference whether he achieves
his purpose or not. If his point of view is all wrong, he
is a bad citizen whether he be rich or poor. It is a small
matter to the community whether in arrogance and insolence
he has misused great wealth, or whether, though
poor, he is possessed by the mean and fierce desire to
seize a morsel, the biggest possible, of that prey which
simply, and justly, and honorably, whether rich or poor,
is a good citizen. Those who dream only of idleness and
pleasure, who hate others, and fail to recognize the duty of
each man to his brother, these, be they rich or poor, are
the enemies of the State. The misuse of property is one
manifestation of the same evil spirit which under changed
circumstances denies the right of property because this
right is in the hands of others. In a purely material
civilization the bitterness of attack on another's possession
is only additional proof of the extraordinary importance
attached to possession itself. When outward
well-being, instead of being regarded as a valuable
foundation on which happiness may with wisdom be built,
is mistaken for happiness itself, so that material prosperity
becomes the one standard, then, alike by those who
enjoy such prosperity in slothful or criminal ease, and by
those who in no less evil manner rail at, envy, and long
for it, poverty is held to be shameful, and money, whether
well or ill gotten, to stand for merit.
All this does not mean condemnation of progress. It
is mere folly to try to dig up the dead past, and scant
is the good that comes from asceticism and retirement
from the world. But let us make sure that our progress
is in the essentials as well as in the incidentals. Material
prosperity without the moral lift toward righteousness
means a diminished capacity for happiness and a debased
character. The worth of a civilization is the worth of the
man at its centre. When this man lacks moral rectitude,
material progress only makes bad worse, and social problems
still darker and more complex.
| Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 | |