 | Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 |  |
XXVII
AT LELAND STANFORD, JUNIOR, UNIVERSITY,
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA, MAY 12, 1903
President Jordan, and you, my fellow-citizens, and especially
you, my fellow college men and women:
I thank you for your greeting, and I know you will not
grudge my saying, first of all, a special word of thanks to
the men of the Grand Army. It is a fine thing to have
before a body of students men who by their practice
have rendered it unnecessary that they should preach;
for what we have to teach by precept, you, the men of
'61 to '65, have taught by deed, by action. I am proud
as an American college man myself to have seen the tablet
outside within the court which shows that this young
university sent eighty-five of her sons to war when the
country called for them. I come from a college which
boasts as its proudest building that which stands to the
memory of Harvard's sons who responded to the call of
Lincoln when the hour of the nation's danger was at
hand. It will be a bad day for this country and a worse
day for all educative institutions in this country, if ever
such a call is made and the men of college training do
not feel it peculiarly incumbent upon them to respond.
President Jordan has been kind enough to allude to me
as an old friend. Mr. Jordan is too modest to say that
he has long been not only a friend, but a man to whom
I have turned for advice and help before and since I
became President. I am glad to have the chance of acknowledging
that when I ask you to strive toward productive scholarship,
toward productive citizenship, I can use the President
of the University as an example. Of course in any of our
American institutions of learning, even more important
than the production of scholarship is the production of
citizenship. That is the most important thing that any
institution of learning can produce. There are a great
number of students who cannot and should not try,
in after-life, to lead a career of scholarship, but no university
can take high rank if it does not aim at the
production of, and succeed in producing, a certain number
of deep and thorough scholars—not scholars whose
scholarship is of the barren kind, but men of productive
scholarship, men who do good work, I trust great work,
in the fields of literature, of art, of science, in all their
manifold activities. Here in California this nation, composite
in its race stocks, speaking an old-world tongue,
and with an inherited old-world culture, has acquired an
absolutely new domain. I do not mean new only in the
sense of additional territory like that already possessed, I
mean new in the sense of new surroundings,—to use the
scientific phrase, of a new environment. Being new, I
think we have a right to look for a substantial achievement
on the part of your people along new lines. I do
not mean the self-conscious striving after newness, which
is only too apt to breed eccentricity, but I mean that
those among you whose bent is toward scholarship as a
career should keep in mind the fact that such scholarship
should be productive, and should therefore aim at giving
to the world some addition to the world's stock of what
is useful or beautiful; and if you work simply and naturally,
taking advantage of your surroundings as you find
them, then in my belief a new mark will be made in the
history of intellectual achievement by our race. You of
this institution are blessed in its extraordinary physical
with a suggestion of what I might call Americanized
Greek. Such is your institution, situated on
the shores of this great ocean, built by a race which has
come steadily westward, and which has come to where
the Occident looks west to the Orient, a race whose
members here, fresh, vigorous, have the boundless possibilities
of the future brought to their very doors in a
sense that cannot be possible for the members of the
race situated farther east. Surely there will be some
great outcome in the way not merely of physical but of
moral and intellectual work worth doing. I do not want
you to turn out prigs, I do not want you to turn out the
self-conscious. I believe with all my heart in play. I
want you to play hard without encroaching on your
work. I do nevertheless think you ought to have at least
the consciousness of the serious side of what all this
means, and of the necessity of effort, thrust upon you,
so that you may justify by your deeds in the future your
training and the extraordinary advantages under which
that training has been obtained.
America, the Republic of the United States, is, of
course, in a peculiar sense typical of the present age.
We represent the fullest development of the democratic
spirit acting on the extraordinary and highly complex
industrial growth of the last half century. It behooves
us to justify by our acts the claims made for that political
and economic progress. We will never justify the existence
of the Republic by merely talking each Fourth of
July about what the Republic has done. If our homage
is lip loyalty merely, the great deeds of those who went
before us, the great deeds of the times of Washington
and of the times of Lincoln, the great deeds of the men
who won the Revolution and founded the Nation, and the
men who preserved it, who made it a Union and a free
Republic, will simply arise to shame us. We can honor
striving to rise level to their standard. There are plenty
of tendencies for evil in what we see round about us.
Thank Heaven, there are an even greater number of
tendencies for good; and one of the things, Mr. Jordan,
which it seems to me give this nation cause for hope is
the national standard of ambition which makes it possible
to recognize in admiration and regard such work as the
founding of a university of this character. It speaks well
for our nation that men and women should desire during
their lives to devote the fortunes which they were able to
gain or to inherit because of our system of government,
because of our social system, to objects so entirely
worthy and so entirely admirable as the foundation of a
great seat of learning such as this. All that we outsiders
can do is to pay our tribute of respect to the dead and
to the living and at least to make it evident that we
appreciate to the full what has been done.
I have spoken of scholarship; I want to go back to the
question of citizenship, a question of not merely scholars
among you, not merely those who are hereafter to
lead lives devoted to science, to art, to productivity in
literature. And when you come into science, art, and
literature remember that one first-class bit of work is
better than one thousand pretty good bits of work; that
as the years roll on the man or the woman who has
been able to make a masterpiece with the pen, the brush,
the pencil, in any way, has rendered a service to the
country such as not all his or her compeers who merely
do fairly good second-rate work can ever accomplish.
Only a limited number of us can ever become scholars or
work successfully along the lines I have spoken of, but
we can all be good citizens. We can all lead a life of
action, a life of endeavor, a life that is to be judged
primarily by the effort, somewhat by the result, along
the lines of helping the growth of what is right and
in the State, in the Nation.
You, men and women, you who have had the advantages
of a college training are not to be excused if you
fail to do, not as well as, but more than the average man
outside who has not had your advantages. Every now
and then I meet (at least I meet him in the East and
I dare say he is to be found here) the man who having
gone through college feels that somehow that confers
upon him a special distinction which relieves him
from the necessity of showing himself as good as his
fellows, I see you recognize the type. That man is
not only a curse to the community, and incidentally
to himself, but he is a curse to the cause of academic
education, the college and university training, because
by his insistence he serves as an excuse for those who
like to denounce such education. Your education, your
training, will not confer on you one privilege in the way
of excusing you from effort or from work. All it can
do, and what it should do, is to make you a little better
fitted for such effort, for such work; and I do not care
whether that is in business, politics, in no matter what
branch of endeavor, all it can do is by the training you
have received, by the advantages you have received, to fit
you to do a little better than the average man that you
meet. It is incumbent upon you to show that the training
has had that effect. It ought to enable you to do a
little better for yourselves, and if you have in you souls
capable of a thrill of generous emotion, souls capable of
understanding what you owe to your training, to your
alma mater, to the past and the present that have given
you all that you have—if you have such souls it ought to
make you doubly bent upon disinterested work for the
State and the Nation.
Such work can be done along many different lines.
I want to-day here in California to make a special appeal
along a certain line—the line of preserving your great
natural advantages alike from the standpoint of use and
from the standpoint of beauty. If the students of this
institution have not by the mere fact of their surroundings
learned to appreciate beauty, then the fault is in
you and not in the surroundings. Here in California you
have some of the great wonders of the world. You have
a singularly beautiful landscape, singularly beautiful and
singularly majestic scenery, and it should certainly be
your aim to try to preserve for those who are to come
after you that beauty, to try to keep unmarred that
majesty. Closely entwined with keeping unmarred the
beauty of your scenery, of your great natural attractions,
is the question of making use of, -not for the moment
merely, but for future time, your great natural products.
Yesterday I saw for the first time a grove of your
trees, a grove which it has taken the ages several thousands
of years to build up; and I feel most emphatically
that we should not turn into shingles a tree which was
old when the first Egyptian conqueror penetrated to the
valley of the Euphrates, which it has taken so many
thousands of years to build up, and which can be put to
better use. That you may say is not looking at the matter
from the practical standpoint. There is nothing more
practical in the end than the preservation of beauty, than
the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher
emotions in mankind. But furthermore I appeal to you
from the standpoint of use. A few big trees, of unusual
size and beauty, should be preserved for their own sake;
but the forests as a whole should be used for business
purposes, only they should be used in a way that will
preserve them as permanent sources of national wealth.
In many parts of California the whole future welfare of
the State depends upon the way in which you are able
to use your water supply; and the preservation of the
inseparably connected. I believe we are past the stage
of national existence when we could look on complacently
at the individual who skinned the land and was content
for the sake of three years' profit for himself to leave a
desert for the children of those who were to inherit the
soil. I think we have passed that stage. We should
handle, and I think we now do handle, all problems such
as those of forestry and of the preservation and use of
our waters from the standpoint of the permanent interests
of the home maker in any region, the man who comes
in not to take what he can out of the soil and leave,
having exploited the country, but who comes to dwell
therein, to bring up his children, and to leave them a
heritage in the country not merely unimpaired, but if
possible even improved. That is the sensible view of
civic obligation, and the policy of the State and of the
Nation should be shaped in that direction. It should be
shaped in the interest of the home maker, the actual
resident, the man who is not only to be benefited himself,
but whose children and children's children are to
be benefited by what he has done. California has for
years, I am happy to say, taken a more sensible, a more
intelligent interest in forest preservation than any other
State. It early appointed a forest commission; later on
some of the functions of that commission were replaced
by the Sierra Club, a club which has done much on the
Pacific coast to perpetuate the spirit of the explorer and
the pioneer. Then, I am happy to say, a great many
business interests showed an intelligent and far-sighted
spirit which is of happy augury, for the Redwood Manufacturers
of San Francisco were first among lumbermen's
associations to give assistance to the cause of practical
forestry. The study of the redwood, which the action
of this association made possible, was the pioneer study
in the co-operative work which is now being carried out
Federal Bureau of Forestry. All of this kind of work is
peculiarly the kind of work in which we have a right
to expect not merely hearty co-operation but leadership
from college men trained in the universities of this
Pacific coast State. For the forests of the State stand
alone in the world. There are none others like them
anywhere. There are no other trees anywhere like the
giant Sequoias; nowhere else is there a more beautiful
forest than that which clothes the western slope of the
Sierra. Very early your forests attracted lumbermen
from other States, and by the course of timber-land investments
some of the best of the big trees were threatened
with destruction. Destruction came upon some of
them, but the women of California rose to the emergency
through the California Club, and later the Sempervirens
Club took vigorous action. But the Calaveras grove is
not yet safe, and there should be no rest until that safety
is secured, by the action of private individuals, by the
action of the State, by the action of the Nation. The
interest of California in forest protection was shown even
more effectively by the purchase of the Big Basin Redwood
Park, a superb forest property, the possession of
which should be a source of just pride to all people
jealous and proud of California's good name.
I appeal to you, as I say, to protect these mighty
trees, these wonderful monuments of beauty. I appeal
to you to protect them for the sake of their beauty, but
I also make the appeal just as strongly on economic
grounds, and I am well aware that in dealing with great
questions a far-sighted economic policy must be that to
which in the long run one appeals. The interests of California
in forests depend directly, of course, upon the
handling of her wood and water supplies and the supply
of material from the lumber woods and the production
of agricultural products on irrigated farms, The great
Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges must owe their future
development, as they owe their present prosperity,
to irrigation. Whatever tends to destroy the water
supply of the Sacramento, the San Gabriel, and other
valleys strikes vitally at the welfare of California. So
that the welfare of California depends in no small measure
upon the preservation of water for the purposes of irrigation
in those beautiful and fertile valleys which cannot
grow crops by rainfall alone. The forest cover upon the
drainage basins of streams used for irrigation purposes
is of prime importance to the interests of the entire State.
Now keep in mind that the whole object of forest protection
is, as I have said again and again, the making and
maintaining of prosperous homes. I am not advocating
forest protection from the æsthetic standpoint only. I
do advocate the keeping of big trees, the great monarchs
of the woods, for the sake of their beauty, but I advocate
the preservation of the forests because I feel it essential
to the interests of the actual settlers. I am asking that
the forests be kept for the sake of the successors of the
pioneers, for the sake of the settlers who dwell on the
land and by doing so extend the borders of our civilization.
I ask it for the sake of the man who makes his
farm in the woods, or lower down along the sides of the
streams which have their rise in the mountains. Every
phase of the land policy of the United States is, as it by
right ought to be, directed to the upbuilding of the home
maker. The one sure test of all public-land legislation
should be: Does it help to make and to keep prosperous
homes? If it does, the legislation is good. If it does
not, the legislation is bad. Any legislation which has a
tendency to give land in large tracts to people who will
lease it out to tenants is undesirable. We do not want
ever to let our land policy be shaped so as to create a big
class of proprietors who rent to others. We want to
rent, actual proprietors. We want to shape our policy
so that these men themselves shall be the land owners,
the makers of homes, the keepers of homes.
Certain of our land laws, however beneficent their purposes,
have been twisted into an improper use, so that
there have grown up abuses under them by which they
tend to create a class of men who under one color and
another obtain large tracts of soil for speculative purposes,
but to rent out to others; and there should be
now a thorough scrutiny of our land laws with the object
of so amending them as to do away with the possibility
of such abuses. If it were not for the national irrigation
act we would be about past the time when Uncle Sam
could give every man a farm. (You know that has been
a saying for a long time in our nation, but if it were not
for the passage by the Federal Congress of the national
irrigation act we would be well toward the end of the
time when that saying would any longer be true.) Comparatively
little of our land is left which is adapted to
farming without irrigation. The home maker on the
public land must hereafter in the great majority of cases
have water for irrigation, or the making of his home will
fail. Let us keep that fact before our minds. Do not
misunderstand me when I have spoken of the defects of
our land laws. Our land laws have served a noble purpose
in the past and have become the models for other
governments. The homestead law has been a notable
instrument for good. To establish a family permanently
upon a quarter section of land, or of course upon a less
quantity if it is irrigated land, is the best use to which it
can be put. The first need of any nation is intelligent
and honest citizens. Such can come only from honest
and intelligent homes, and to get the good citizenship we
must get the good homes. It is absolutely necessary
that the remainder of our public land should be reserved
that there should be a revision of the land laws and a
cutting out of such provisions from them as in actual
practice under present conditions tend to make possible
the acquisition of large tracts for speculative purposes or
for the purpose of leasing to others.
Citizenship is the prime test in the welfare of the
nation, but we need good laws, and above all we need
good land laws throughout the West. We want to see
the free farmer own his home. The best of the public
lands are already in private hands, and yet the rate
of their disposal is steadily increasing. More than six
million acres were patented during the first three months
of the present year. It is time for us to see that our
remaining public lands are saved for the home maker
to the utmost limit of his possible use. I say this to you
of this university because we have a right to expect that
the best trained, the best educated men on the Pacific
slope, the Rocky Mountains, and great plains States will
take the lead in the preservation and right use of the
forests, in securing the right use of the waters, and in
seeing to it that our land policy is not twisted from its
original purpose, but is perpetuated by amendment, by
change when such change is necessary in the line of that
purpose, the purpose being to turn the public domain
into farms each to be the property of the man who actually
tills it and makes his home on it.
Infinite are the possibilities for usefulness that lie before
such a body as that I am addressing. Work? Of
course you will have to work. I should be sorry for you
if you did not have to work. Of course you will have to
work, and I envy you the fact that before you, before
the graduates of this university, lies the chance of lives
to be spent in hard labor for great and glorious and useful
causes, hard labor for the uplifting of your States, of the
Union, of all mankind.
| Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 | |