 | Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 |  |
MESSAGE COMMUNICATED TO THE TWO HOUSES
OF CONGRESS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
FIRST SESSION OF THE FIFTY-SEVENTH
CONGRESS
The Congress assembles this year under the shadow of
a great calamity. On the sixth of September, President
McKinley was shot by an anarchist while attending the
Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, and died in that
city on the fourteenth of that month.
Of the last seven elected Presidents, he is the third who
has been murdered, and the bare recital of this fact is
sufficient to justify grave alarm among all loyal American
citizens. Moreover, the circumstances of this, the third
assassination of an American President, have a peculiarly
sinister significance. Both President Lincoln and President
Garfield were killed by assassins of types unfortunately
not uncommon in history; President Lincoln falling
a victim to the terrible passions aroused by four years of
civil war, and President Garfield to the revengeful vanity
of a disappointed office-seeker. President McKinley was
killed by an utterly depraved criminal belonging to that
body of criminals who object to all governments, good
and bad alike, who are against any form of popular liberty
if it is guaranteed by even the most just and liberal laws,
and who are as hostile to the upright exponent of a free
people's sober will as to the tyrannical and irresponsible
despot.
It is not too much to say that at the time of President
all the United States; while we have never had any public
man of his position who has been so wholly free from the
bitter animosities incident to public life. His political
opponents were the first to bear the heartiest and most
generous tribute to the broad kindliness of nature, the
sweetness and gentleness of character which so endeared
him to his close associates. To a standard of lofty integrity
in public life he united the tender affections and
home virtues which are all-important in the make-up of
national character. A gallant soldier in the great war for
the Union, he also shone as an example to all our people
because of his conduct in the most sacred and intimate of
home relations. There could be no personal hatred of
him, for he never acted with aught but consideration for
the welfare of others. No one could fail to respect him
who knew him in public or private life. The defenders
of those murderous criminals who seek to excuse their
criminality by asserting that it is exercised for political
ends, inveigh against wealth and irresponsible power.
But for this assassination even this base apology cannot
be urged.
President McKinley was a man of moderate means, a
man whose stock sprang from the sturdy tillers of the
soil, who had himself belonged among the wage workers,
who had entered the Army as a private soldier. Wealth
was not struck at when the President was assassinated,
but the honest toil which is content with moderate gains
after a lifetime of unremitting labor, largely in the service
of the public. Still less was power struck at in the sense
that power is irresponsible or centred in the hands of any
one individual. The blow was not aimed at tyranny or
wealth. It was aimed at one of the strongest champions
the wage worker has ever had; at one of the most faithful
representatives of the system of public rights and
representative government who has ever risen to public
which the entire people vote, and no President—not even
Lincoln himself—was ever more earnestly anxious to
represent the well-thought-out wishes of the people; his
one anxiety in every crisis was to keep in closest touch
with the people—to find out what they thought and to
endeavor to give expression to their thought, after having
endeavored to guide that thought aright. He had just
been re-elected to the Presidency because the majority of
our citizens, the majority of our farmers and wage workers,
believed that he had faithfully upheld their interests
for four years. They felt themselves in close and intimate
touch with him. They felt that he represented so well
and so honorably all their ideals and aspirations that they
wished him to continue for another four years to represent
them.
And this was the man at whom the assassin struck!
That there might be nothing lacking to complete the
Judas-like infamy of his act, he took advantage of an
occasion when the President was meeting the people
generally; and advancing as if to take the hand outstretched
to him in kindly and brotherly fellowship, he
turned the noble and generous confidence of the victim
into an opportunity to strike the fatal blow. There is no
baser deed in all the annals of crime.
The shock, the grief of the country, are bitter in the
minds of all who saw the dark days, while the President
yet hovered between life and death. At last the light
was stilled in the kindly eyes and the breath went from
the lips that even in mortal agony uttered no words save
of forgiveness to his murderer, of love for his friends, and
of unfaltering trust in the will of the Most High. Such
a death, crowning the glory of such a life, leaves us with
infinite sorrow, but with such pride in what he had accomplished
and in his own personal character, that we
feel the blow not as struck at him, but as struck at the
dead; but while we mourn we are lifted up by the splendid
achievements of his life and the grand heroism with
which he met his death.
When we turn from the man to the Nation, the harm
done is so great as to excite our gravest apprehensions
and to demand our wisest and most resolute action.
This criminal was a professed anarchist, inflamed by the
teachings of professed anarchists, and probably also by
the reckless utterances of those who, on the stump and
in the public press, appeal to the dark and evil spirits of
malice and greed, envy and sullen hatred. The wind is
sowed by the men who preach such doctrines, and they
cannot escape their share of responsibility for the whirlwind
that is reaped. This applies alike to the deliberate
demagogue, to the exploiter of sensationalism, and to the
crude and foolish visionary who, for whatever reason,
apologizes for crime or excites aimless discontent.
The blow was aimed not at this President, but at all
Presidents; at every symbol of government. President
McKinley was as emphatically the embodiment of the
popular will of the Nation expressed through the forms
of law as a New England town meeting is in similar
fashion the embodiment of the law-abiding purpose and
practice of the people of the town. On no conceivable
theory could the murder of the President be accepted as
due to protest against "inequalities in the social order,"
save as the murder of all the freemen engaged in a town
meeting could be accepted as a protest against that social
inequality which puts a malefactor in jail. Anarchy is
no more an expression of "social discontent" than picking
pockets or wife-beating.
The anarchist, and especially the anarchist in the
United States, is merely one type of criminal, more dangerous
than any other because he represents the same
depravity in a greater degree. The man who advocates
the man who apologizes for anarchists and their deeds,
makes himself morally accessory to murder before the
fact. The anarchist is a criminal whose perverted instincts
lead him to prefer confusion and chaos to the most
beneficent form of social order. His protest of concern
for working men is outrageous in its impudent falsity; for
if the political institutions of this country do not afford
opportunity to every honest and intelligent son of toil,
then the door of hope is forever closed against him. The
anarchist is everywhere not merely the enemy of system
and of progress, but the deadly foe of liberty. If ever
anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last for but one
red moment, to be succeeded for ages by the gloomy
night of despotism.
For the anarchist himself, whether he preaches or practises
his doctrines, we need not have one particle more
concern than for any ordinary murderer. He is not the
victim of social or political injustice. There are no
wrongs to remedy in his case. The cause of his criminality
is to be found in his own evil passions and in the evil
conduct of those who urge him on, not in any failure by
others or by the State to do justice to him or his. He is
a malefactor and nothing else. He is in no sense, in no
shape or way, a "product of social conditions," save as a
highwayman is "produced" by the fact that an unarmed
man happens to have a purse. It is a travesty upon the
great and holy names of liberty and freedom to permit
them to be invoked in such a cause. No man or body
of men preaching anarchistic doctrines should be allowed
at large any more than if preaching the murder of
some specified private individual. Anarchistic speeches,
writings, and meetings are essentially seditious and
treasonable.
I earnestly recommend to the Congress that in the
exercise of its wise discretion it should take into consideration
persons professing principles hostile to all government
and justifying the murder of those placed in authority.
Such individuals as those who not long ago gathered in
open meeting to glorify the murder of King Humbert of
Italy perpetrate a crime, and the law should insure their
rigorous punishment. They and those like them should
be kept out of this country; and if found here they
should be promptly deported to the country whence they
came; and far-reaching provision should be made for the
punishment of those who stay. No matter calls more
urgently for the wisest thought of the Congress.
The Federal courts should be given jurisdiction over
any man who kills or attempts to kill the President or any
man who by the Constitution or by law is in line of succession
for the Presidency, while the punishment for an
unsuccessful attempt should be proportioned to the
enormity of the offence against our institutions.
Anarchy is a crime against the whole human race; and
all mankind should band against the anarchist. His
crime should be made an offence against the law of
nations, like piracy and that form of man-stealing known
as the slave trade; for it is of far blacker infamy than
either. It should be so declared by treaties among all
civilized powers. Such treaties would give to the Federal
Government the power of dealing with the crime.
A grim commentary upon the folly of the anarchist
position was afforded by the attitude of the law toward
this very criminal who had just taken the life of the President.
The people would have torn him limb from limb
if it had not been that the law he defied was at once invoked
in his behalf. So far from his deed being committed
on behalf of the people against the Government,
the Government was obliged at once to exert its full
police power to save him from instant death at the hands
of the people. Moreover, his deed worked not the
danger of a recurrence of such deeds, no matter how great
it might grow, would work only in the direction of
strengthening and giving harshness to the forces of order.
No man will ever be restrained from becoming President
by any fear as to his personal safety. If the risk to the
President's life became great, it would mean that the
office would more and more come to be filled by men of
a spirit which would make them resolute and merciless in
dealing with every friend of disorder. This great country
will not fall into anarchy, and if anarchists should
ever become a serious menace to its institutions, they
would not merely be stamped out, but would involve in
their own ruin every active or passive sympathizer with
their doctrines. The American people are slow to wrath,
but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming
flame.
During the last five years business confidence has been
restored, and the Nation is to be congratulated because
of its present abounding prosperity. Such prosperity
can never be created by law alone, although it is easy
enough to destroy it by mischievous laws. If the hand
of the Lord is heavy upon any country, if flood or
drought comes, human wisdom is powerless to avert the
calamity. Moreover, no law can guard us against the
consequences of our own folly. The men who are idle
or credulous, the men who seek gains not by genuine
work with head or hand but by gambling in any form,
are always a source of menace not only to themselves but
to others. If the business world loses its head, it loses
what legislation cannot supply. Fundamentally the welfare
of each citizen, and therefore the welfare of the
aggregate of citizens which makes the Nation, must rest
upon individual thrift and energy, resolution and intelligence.
Nothing can take the place of this individual
administration can give it the fullest scope, the largest
opportunity to work to good effect.
The tremendous and highly complex industrial development
which went on with ever accelerated rapidity during
the latter half of the nineteenth century brings us face to
face, at the beginning of the twentieth, with very serious
social problems. The old laws, and the old customs
which had almost the binding force of law, were once
quite sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution
of wealth. Since the industrial changes which
have so enormously increased the productive power of
mankind, they are no longer sufficient.
The growth of cities has gone on beyond comparison
faster than the growth of the country, and the upbuilding
of the great industrial centres has meant a startling increase,
not merely in the aggregate of wealth, but in the
number of very large individual, and especially of very
large corporate, fortunes. The creation of these great
corporate fortunes has net been due to the tariff nor to
any other governmental action, but to natural causes in
the business world, operating in other countries as they
operate in our own.
The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part
of which is wholly without warrant. It is not true that
as the rich have grown richer the poor have grown poorer.
On the contrary, never before has the average man, the
wage worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well
off as in this country and at the present time. There
have been abuses connected with the accumulation of
wealth; yet it remains true that a fortune accumulated
in legitimate business can be accumulated by the person
specially benefited only on condition of conferring immense
incidental benefits upon others. Successful enterprise,
of the type which benefits all mankind, can only
the rewards of success.
The captains of industry who have driven the railway
systems across this continent, who have built up our commerce,
who have developed our manufactures, have on
the whole done great good to our people. Without
them the material development of which we are so justly
proud could never have taken place. Moreover, we
should recognize the immense importance to this material
development of leaving as unhampered as is compatible
with the public good the strong and forceful men upon
whom the success of business operations inevitably rests.
The slightest study of business conditions will satisfy any
one capable of forming a judgment that the personal
equation is the most important factor in a business
operation; that the business ability of the man at the
head of any business concern, big or little, is usually the
factor which fixes the gulf between striking success and
hopeless failure.
An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations
is to be found in the international commercial
conditions of to-day. The same business conditions
which have produced the great aggregations of corporate
and individual wealth have made them very potent factors
in international commercial competition. Business
concerns which have the largest means at their disposal
and are managed by the ablest men are naturally those
which take the lead in the strife for commercial supremacy
among the nations of the world. America has only
just begun to assume that commanding position in the
international business world which we believe will more
and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance that
this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time when
the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources
and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude
of our people make foreign markets essential. Under
fetter the youthful strength of our Nation.
Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to
strike with ignorant violence at the interests of one set
of men almost inevitably endangers the interests of all.
The fundamental rule in our national life—the rule which
underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the
long run, we shall go up or down together. There are
exceptions; and in times of prosperity some will prosper
far more, and in times of adversity some will suffer far
more, than others; but speaking generally, a period of
good times means that all share more or less in them, and
in a period of hard times all feel the stress to a greater or
less degree. It surely ought not to be necessary to enter
into any proof of this statement; the memory of the lean
years which began in 1893 is still vivid, and we can contrast
them with the conditions in this very year which is
now closing. Disaster to great business enterprises can
never have its effects limited to the men at the top. It
spreads throughout, and while it is bad for everybody, it
is worst for those farthest down. The capitalist may be
shorn of his luxuries; but the wage worker may be
deprived of even bare necessities.
The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that
extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a
spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many of those who have
made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial
combinations which are popularly, although with technical
inaccuracy, known as "trusts," appeal especially to
hatred and fear. These are precisely the two emotions,
particularly when combined with ignorance, which unfit
men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment. In
facing new industrial conditions, the whole history of the
world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise
and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and
with sober self-restraint. Much of the legislation directed
had it not also been entirely ineffective. In accordance
with a well-known sociological law, the ignorant or reckless
agitator has been the really effective friend of the evils
which he has been nominally opposing. In dealing with
business interests, for the Government to undertake by
crude and ill-considered legislation to do what may turn
out to be bad, would be to incur the risk of such far-reaching
national disaster that it would be preferable to
undertake nothing at all. The men who demand the impossible
or the undesirable serve as the allies of the forces
with which they are nominally at war, for they hamper
those who would endeavor to find out in rational fashion
what the wrongs really are and to what extent and in
what manner it is practicable to apply remedies.
All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real
and grave evils, one of the chief being over-capitalization
because of its many baleful consequences; and a resolute
and practical effort must be made to correct these evils.
There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the
American people that the great corporations known as
trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful
to the general welfare. This springs from no spirit
of envy or uncharitableness, nor lack of pride in the great
industrial achievements that have placed this country at
the head of the nations struggling for commercial supremacy.
It does not rest upon a lack of intelligent appreciation
of the necessity of meeting changing and changed
conditions of trade with new methods, nor upon ignorance
of the fact that combination of capital in the effort
to accomplish great things is necessary when the world's
progress demands that great things be done. It is based
upon sincere conviction that combination and concentration
should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within
reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this
conviction is right.
It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of
contract to require that when men receive from Government
the privilege of doing business under corporate
form, which frees them from individual responsibility,
and enables them to call into their enterprises the capital
of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful
representations as to the value of the property in which
the capital is to be invested. Corporations engaged in
interstate commerce should be regulated if they are found
to exercise a license working to the public injury. It
should be as much the aim of those who seek for social
betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning
as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence.
Great corporations exist only because they are created
and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore
our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony
with these institutions.
The first essential in determining how to deal with the
great industrial combinations is knowledge of the facts—
publicity. In the interest of the public, the Government
should have the right to inspect and examine the workings
of the great corporations engaged in interstate business.
Publicity is the only sure remedy which we can
now invoke. What further remedies are needed in the
way of governmental regulation, or taxation, can only be
determined after publicity has been obtained, by process
of law, and in the course of administration. The first
requisite is knowledge, full and complete—knowledge
which may be made public to the world.
Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint-stock
or other associations, depending upon any statutory law
for their existence or privileges, should be subject to
proper governmental supervision, and full and accurate
information as to their operations should be made public
regularly at reasonable intervals.
The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though
States, often doing very little business in the State where
they are incorporated. There is utter lack of uniformity
in the State laws about them; and as no State has any
exclusive interest in or power over their acts, it has in
practice proved impossible to get adequate regulation
through State action. Therefore, in the interest of the
whole people, the Nation should, without interfering
with the power of the States in the matter itself, also assume
power of supervision and regulation over all corporations
doing an interstate business. This is especially
true where the corporation derives a portion of its wealth
from the existence of some monopolistic element or tendency
in its business. There would be no hardship in
such supervision; banks are subject to it, and in their
case ït is now accepted as a simple matter of course. Indeed,
it is probable that supervision of corporations by
the National Government need not go so far as is now
the case with the supervision exercised over them by so
conservative a State as Massachusetts, in order to produce
excellent results.
When the Constitution was adopted, at the end of the
eighteenth century, no human wisdom could foretell the
sweeping changes, alike in industrial and political conditions,
which were to take place by the beginning of the
twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a
matter of course that the several States were the proper
authorities to regulate, so far as was then necessary, the
comparatively insignificant and strictly localized corporate
bodies of the day. The conditions are now wholly different
and wholly different action is called for. I believe
that a law can be framed which will enable the National
Government to exercise control along the lines above indicated;
profiting by the experience gained through the
passage and administration of the Interstate-Commerce
Act. If, however, the judgment of the Congress is that
a constitutional amendment should be submitted to confer
the power.
There should be created a Cabinet officer, to be known
as Secretary of Commerce and Industries, as provided in
the bill introduced at the last session of the Congress. It
should be his province to deal with commerce in its
broadest sense; including among many other things
whatever concerns labor and all matters affecting the
great business corporations and our merchant marine.
The course proposed is one phase of what should be
a comprehensive and far-reaching scheme of constructive
statesmanship for the purpose of broadening our markets,
securing our business interests on a safe basis, and making
firm our new position in the international industrial world;
while scrupulously safeguarding the rights of wage worker
and capitalist, of investor and private citizen, so as to
secure equity as between man and man in this Republic.
With the sole exception of the farming interest, no
one matter is of such vital moment to our whole people
as the welfare of the wage workers. If the farmer and
the wage worker are well off, it is absolutely certain that
all others will be well off too. It is therefore a matter
for hearty congratulation that on the whole wages are
higher to-day in the United States than ever before in
our history, and far higher than in any other country.
The standard of living is also higher than ever before.
Every effort of legislator and administrator should be
bent to secure the permanency of this condition of things
and its improvement wherever possible. Not only must
our labor be protected by the tariff, but it should also be
protected so far as it is possible from the presence in this
country of any laborers brought over by contract, or of
those who, coming freely, yet represent a standard of
living so depressed that they can undersell our men in the
labor market and drag them to a lower level. I regard it
the law excluding Chinese laborers and to strengthen
it wherever necessary in order to make its enforcement
entirely effective.
The National Government should demand the highest
quality of service from its employees; and in return it
should be a good employer. If possible legislation should
be passed, in connection with the Interstate-Commerce
Law, which will render effective the efforts of different
States to do away with the competition of convict contract
labor in the open labor market. So far as practicable
under the conditions of Government work, provision
should be made to render the enforcement of the eight-hour
law easy and certain. In all industries carried on
directly or indirectly for the United States Government
women and children should be protected from excessive
hours of labor, from night work, and from work under
unsanitary conditions. The Government should provide
in its contracts that all work should be done under "fair"
conditions, and in addition to setting a high standard
should uphold it by proper inspection, extending if necessary
to the sub-contractors. The Government should
forbid all night work for women and children, as well as
excessive overtime. For the District of Columbia a good
factory law should be passed; and, as a powerful indirect
aid to such laws, provision should be made to turn the
inhabited alleys, the existence of which is a reproach to
our Capital City, into minor streets, where the inhabitants
can live under conditions favorable to health and morals.
American wage workers work with their heads as well
as their hands, Moreover, they take a keen pride in
what they are doing; so that, independent of the reward,
they wish to turn out a perfect job. This is the great
secret of our success in competition with the labor of
foreign countries.
The most vital problem with which this country, and
the problem which has for one side the betterment of
social conditions, moral and physical, in large cities, and
for another side the effort to deal with that tangle of far-reaching
questions which we group together when we
speak of "labor." The chief factor in the success of
each man—wage worker, farmer, and capitalist alike—
must ever be the sum total of his own individual qualities
and abilities. Second only to this comes the power of
acting in combination or association with others. Very
great good has been and will be accomplished by associations
or unions of wage workers, when managed with
forethought, and when they combine insistence upon their
own rights with law-abiding respect for the rights of
others. The display of these qualities in such bodies is
a duty to the Nation no less than to the associations
themselves. Finally, there must also in many cases be
action by the Government in order to safeguard the rights
and interests of all. Under our Constitution there is
much more scope for such action by the State and the
municipality than by the Nation. But on points such as
those touched on above the National Government can act.
When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood
remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the
kind of national life for which we strive. Each man must
work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help
can avail him; but each man must remember also that
he is indeed his brother's keeper, and that while no man
who refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to
himself or any one else, yet that each at times stumbles
or halts, that each at times needs to have the helping
hand outstretched to him. To be permanently effective,
aid must always take the form of helping a man to help
himself; and we can all best help ourselves by joining
together in the work that is of common interest to
all.
Our present immigration laws are unsatisfactory. We
need every honest and efficient immigrant fitted to become
an American citizen, every immigrant who comes
here to stay, who brings here a strong body, a stout
heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose to do his duty
well in every way and to bring up his children as law-abiding
and God-fearing members of the community.
But there should be a comprehensive law enacted with
the object of working a threefold improvement over our
present system. First, we should aim to exclude absolutely
not only all persons who are known to be believers
in anarchistic principles or members of anarchistic societies,
but also all persons who are of a low moral tendency
or of unsavory reputation. This means that we
should require a more thorough system of inspection
abroad and a more rigid system of examination at our
immigration ports, the former being especially necessary.
The second object of a proper immigration law ought
to be to secure by a careful and not merely perfunctory
educational test some intelligent capacity to appreciate
American institutions and act sanely as American citizens.
This would not keep out all anarchists, for many of them
belong to the intelligent criminal class. But it would do
what is also in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of
ignorance, so potent in producing the envy, suspicion,
malignant passion, and hatred of order, out of which
anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. Finally, all persons
should be excluded who are below a certain standard
of economic fitness to enter our industrial field as competitors
with American labor. There should be proper
proof of personal capacity to earn an American living and
enough money to insure a decent start under American
conditions. This would stop the influx of cheap labor,
and the resulting competition which give rise to so much
of bitterness in American industrial life; and it would dry
up the springs of the pestilential social conditions in our
greatest possibility of growth.
Both the educational and economic tests in a wise immigration
law should be designed to protect and elevate
the general body politic and social. A very close supervision
should be exercised over the steamship companies
which mainly bring over the immigrants, and they should
be held to a strict accountability for any infraction of the
law.
There is general acquiescence in our present tariff system
as a national policy. The first requisite to our
prosperity is the continuity and stability of this economic
policy. Nothing could be more unwise than to disturb
the business interests of the country by any general tariff
change at this time. Doubt, apprehension, uncertainty
are exactly what we most wish to avoid in the interest of
our commercial and material well-being. Our experience
in the past has shown that sweeping revisions of the
tariff are apt to produce conditions closely approaching
panic in the business world. Yet it is not only possible,
but eminently desirable, to combine with the stability of
our economic system a supplementary system of reciprocal
benefit and obligation with other nations. Such
reciprocity is an incident and result of the firm establishment
and preservation of our present economic policy.
It was specially provided for in the present tariff law.
Reciprocity must be treated as the handmaiden of protection.
Our first duty is to see that the protection
granted by the tariff in every case where it is needed is
maintained, and that reciprocity be sought for so far as it
can safely be done without injury to our home industries.
Just how far this is must be determined according to the
individual case, remembering always that every application
of our tariff policy to meet our shifting national
needs must be conditioned upon the cardinal fact that the
cover the difference between the labor cost here and
abroad. The well-being of the wage worker is a prime
consideration of our entire policy of economic legislation.
Subject to this proviso of the proper protection necessary
to our industrial well-being at home, the principle
of reciprocity must command our hearty support. The
phenomenal growth of our export trade emphasizes the
urgency of the need for wider markets and for a liberal
policy in dealing with foreign nations. Whatever is
merely petty and vexatious in the way of trade restrictions
should be avoided, The customers to whom we
dispose of our surplus products, in the long run, directly
or indirectly, purchase those surplus products by giving
us something in return. Their ability to purchase our
products should as far as possible be secured by so arranging
our tariff as to enable us to take from them those
products which we can use without harm to our own industries
and labor, or the use of which will be of marked
benefit to us.
It is most important that we should maintain the high
level of our present prosperity. We have now reached
the point in the development of our interests where we
are not only able to supply our own markets but to produce
a constantly growing surplus for which we must find
markets abroad. To secure these markets we can utilize
existing duties in any case where they are no longer
needed for the purpose of protection, or in any case
where the article is not produced here and the duty is no
longer necessary for revenue, as giving us something to
offer in exchange for what we ask. The cordial relations
with other nations which are so desirable will naturally
be promoted by the course thus required by our own
interests.
The natural line of development for a policy of reciprocity
will be in connection with those of our productions
establish them upon a sound basis, and with those others
where either because of natural or of economic causes we
are beyond the reach of successful competition.
I ask the attention of the Senate to the reciprocity
treaties laid before it by my predecessor.
The condition of the American merchant marine is such
as to call for immediate remedial action by the Congress.
It is discreditable to us as a Nation that our merchant
marine should be utterly insignificant in comparison to
that of other nations which we overtop in other forms of
business. We should not longer submit to conditions
under which only a trifling portion of our great commerce
is carried in our own ships. To remedy this state of
things would not merely serve to build up our shipping
interests, but it would also result in benefit to all who
are interested in the permanent establishment of a wider
market for American products, and would provide an
auxiliary force for the Navy. Ships work for their own
countries just as railroads work for their terminal points.
Shipping lines, if established to the principal countries
with which we have dealings, would be of political as well
as commercial benefit. From every standpoint it is unwise
for the United States to continue to rely upon the
ships of competing nations for the distribution of our
goods. It should be made advantageous to carry American
goods in American-built ships.
At present American shipping is under certain great
disadvantages when put in competition with the shipping
of foreign countries. Many of the fast foreign steamships,
at a speed of fourteen knots or above, are subsidized;
and all our ships, sailing vessels and steamers
alike, cargo carriers of slow speed and mail carriers of
high speed, have to meet the fact that the original cost
of building American ships is greater than is the case
are very much higher than those paid the officers
and seamen of foreign competing countries; and that the
standard of living on our ships is far superior to the
standard of living on the ships of our commercial rivals.
Our Government should take such action as will
remedy these inequalities. The American merchant
marine should be restored to the ocean.
The Act of March 14, 1900, intended unequivocally to
establish gold as the standard money and to maintain at
a parity therewith all forms of money medium in use with
us, has been shown to be timely and judicious. The
price of our Government bonds in the world's market,
when compared with the price of similar obligations
issued by other nations, is a flattering tribute to our public
credit. This condition it is evidently desirable to
maintain.
In many respects the National Banking Law furnishes
sufficient liberty for the proper exercise of the banking
function; but there seems to be need of better safeguards
against the deranging influence of commercial crises and
financial panics. Moreover, the currency of the country
should be made responsive to the demands of our domestic
trade and commerce.
The collections from duties on imports and internal
taxes continue to exceed the ordinary expenditures of
the Government, thanks mainly to the reduced army expenditures.
The utmost care should be taken not to
reduce the revenues so that there will be any possibility
of a deficit; but, after providing against any such contingency,
means should be adopted which will bring the
revenues more nearly within the limit of our actual needs.
In his report to the Congress the Secretary of the Treasury
considers all these questions at length, and I ask your
attention to the report and recommendations.
I call special attention to the need of strict economy in
expenditures. The fact that our national needs forbid
us to be niggardly in providing whatever is actually
necessary to our well-being, should make us doubly careful
to husband our national resources, as each of us
husbands his private resources, by scrupulous avoidance
of anything like wasteful or reckless expenditure. Only
by avoidance of spending money on what is needless or
unjustifiable can we legitimately keep our income to the
point required to meet our needs that are genuine.
In 1887 a measure was enacted for the regulation of
interstate railways, commonly known as the Interstate-Commerce
Act. The cardinal provisions of that act were
that railway rates should be just and reasonable and that
all shippers, localities, and commodities should be accorded
equal treatment, A commission was created and
endowed with what were supposed to be the necessary
powers to execute the provisions of this act.
That law was largely an experiment. Experience has
shown the wisdom of its purposes, but has also shown,
possibly, that some of its requirements are wrong, certainly
that the means devised for the enforcement of its
provisions are defective. Those who complain of the
management of the railways allege that established rates
are not maintained; that rebates and similar devices are
habitually resorted to; that these preferences are usually
in favor of the large shipper; that they drive out of business
the smaller competitor; that while many rates are
too low, many others are excessive; and that gross preferences
are made, affecting both localities and commodities.
Upon the other hand, the railways assert that
the law by its very terms tends to produce many of
these illegal practices by depriving carriers of that right
of concerted action which they claim is necessary to
establish and maintain non-discriminating rates.
The act should be amended. The railway is a public
servant. Its rates should be just to and open to all
shippers alike. The Government should see to it that
within its jurisdiction this is so and should provide a
speedy, inexpensive, and effective remedy to that end.
At the same time it must not be forgotten that our railways
are the arteries through which the commercial lifeblood
of this Nation flows. Nothing could be more
foolish than the enactment of legislation which would
unnecessarily interfere with the development and operation
of these commercial agencies. The subject is one of
great importance and calls for the earnest attention of the
Congress.
The Department of Agriculture during the past fifteen
years has steadily broadened its work on economic lines,
and has accomplished results of real value in upbuilding
domestic and foreign trade. It has gone into new fields
until it is now in touch with all sections of our country
and with two of the island groups that have lately come
under our jurisdiction, whose people must look to agriculture
as a livelihood. It is searching the world for
grains, grasses, fruits, and vegetables specially fitted for
introduction into localities in the several States and Territories
where they may add materially to our resources.
By scientific attention to soil survey and possible new
crops, to breeding of new varieties of plants, to experimental
shipments, to animal industry and applied chemistry,
very practical aid has been given our farming and
stock-growing interests. The products of the farm have
taken an unprecedented place in our export trade during
the year that has just closed.
Public opinion throughout the United States has moved
steadily toward a just appreciation of the value of forests,
whether planted or of natural growth. The great part
national wealth is now more fully realized than ever
before.
Wise forest protection does not mean the withdrawal
of forest resources, whether of wood, water, or grass,
from contributing their full share to the welfare of the
people, but, on the contrary, gives the assurance of
larger and more certain supplies. The fundamental idea
of forestry is the perpetuation of forests by use. Forest
protection is not an end of itself; it is a means to increase
and sustain the resources of our country and the industries
which depend upon them. The preservation of our
forests is an imperative business necessity. We have
come to see clearly that whatever destroys the forest,
except to make way for agriculture, threatens our wellbeing.
The practical usefulness of the national forest reserves to
the mining, grazing, irrigation, and other interests of the
regions in which the reserves lie has led to a widespread
demand by the people of the West for their protection
and extension. The forest reserves will inevitably be of
still greater use in the future than in the past. Additions
should be made to them whenever practicable, and their
usefulness should be increased by a thoroughly businesslike
management.
At present the protection of the forest reserves rests
with the General Land Office, the mapping and description
of their timber with the United States Geological
Survey, and the preparation of plans for their conservative
use with the Bureau of Forestry, which is also charged
with the general advancement of practical forestry in the
United States. These various functions should be united
in the Bureau of Forestry, to which they properly belong.
The present diffusion of responsibility is bad from every
standpoint. It prevents that effective co-operation between
the Government and the men who utilize the resources
both must suffer. The scientific bureaus generally should
be put under the Department of Agriculture. The President
should have by law the power of transferring lands
for use as forest reserves to the Department of Agriculture.
He already has such power in the case of lands
needed by the Departments of War and the Navy.
The wise administration of the forest reserves will be
not less helpful to the interests which depend on water
than to those which depend on wood and grass. The
water supply itself depends upon the forest. In the arid
region it is water, not land, which measures production.
The western half of the United States would sustain a
population greater than that of our whole country to-day
if the waters that now run to waste were saved and used
for irrigation. The forest and water problems are perhaps
the most vital internal questions of the United
States.
Certain of the forest reserves should also be made preserves
for the wild forest creatures. All of the reserves
should be better protected from fires. Many of them
need special protection because of the great injury done
by live stock, above all by sheep. The increase in deer,
elk, and other animals in the Yellowstone Park shows
what may be expected when other mountain forests are
properly protected by law and properly guarded. Some
of these areas have been so denuded of surface vegetation
by overgrazing that the ground-breeding birds, including
grouse and quail, and many mammals, including
deer, have been exterminated or driven away. At the
same time the water-storing capacity of the surface has
been decreased or destroyed, thus promoting floods in
times of rain and diminishing the flow of streams between
rains.
In cases where natural conditions have been restored
for a few years, vegetation has again carpeted the ground,
especially from the immediate neighborhood, come each
summer to enjoy the privilege of camping. Some at least
of the forest reserves should afford perpetual protection
to the native fauna and flora, safe havens of refuge to our
rapidly diminishing wild animals of the larger kinds, and
free camping grounds for the ever-increasing numbers of
men and women who have learned to find rest, health,
and recreation in the splendid forests and flower-clad
meadows of our mountains. The forest reserves should
be set apart forever for the use and benefit of our people
as a whole and not sacrificed to the short-sighted greed of
a few.
The forests are natural reservoirs. By restraining the
streams in flood and replenishing them in drought they
make possible the use of waters otherwise wasted. They
prevent the soil from washing, and so protect the storage
reservoirs from filling up with silt. Forest conservation
is therefore an essential condition of water conservation.
The forests alone cannot, however, fully regulate and
conserve the waters of the arid region. Great storage
works are necessary to equalize the flow of streams and
to save the flood waters. Their construction has been
conclusively shown to be an undertaking too vast for
private effort. Nor can it be best accomplished by the
individual States acting alone. Far-reaching interstate
problems are involved; and the resources of single States
would often be inadequate. It is properly a national
function, at least in some of its features. It is as right
for the National Government to make the streams and
rivers of the arid region useful by engineering works for
water storage as to make useful the rivers and harbors of
the humid region by engineering works of another kind.
The storing of the floods in reservoirs at the headwaters
of our rivers is but an enlargement of our present policy
reaches of the same streams.
The Government should construct and maintain these
reservoirs as it does other public works. Where their
purpose is to regulate the flow of streams, the water
should be turned freely into the channels in the dry season
to take the same course under the same laws as the natural
flow.
The reclamation of the unsettled arid public lands presents
a different problem. Here it is not enough to
regulate the flow of streams. The object of the Government
is to dispose of the land to settlers who will build
homes upon it. To accomplish this object water must
be brought within their reach.
The pioneer settlers on the arid public domain chose
their homes along streams from which they could themselves
divert the water to reclaim their holdings. Such
opportunities are practically gone. There remain, however,
vast areas of public land which can be made available
for homestead settlement, but only by reservoirs and
main-line canals impracticable for private enterprise.
These irrigation works should be built by the National
Government. The lands reclaimed by them should be
reserved by the Government for actual settlers, and the
cost of construction should so far as possible be repaid by
the land reclaimed. The distribution of the water, the
division of the streams among irrigators, should be left to
the settlers themselves in conformity with State laws and
without interference with those laws or with vested rights.
The policy of the National Government should be to aid
irrigation in the several States and Territories in such
manner as will enable the people in the local communities
to help themselves, and as will stimulate needed reforms
in the State laws and regulations governing irrigation.
The reclamation and settlement of the arid lands will
enrich every portion of our country, just as the settlement
the Atlantic States. The increased demand for manufactured
articles will stimulate industrial production, while
wider home markets and the trade of Asia will consume
the larger food supplies and effectually prevent Western
competition with Eastern agriculture. Indeed, the products
of irrigation will be consumed chiefly in upbuilding
local centres of mining and other industries, which would
otherwise not come into existence at all. Our people as
a whole will profit, for successful home-making is but
another name for the upbuilding of the Nation.
The necessary foundation has already been laid for the
inauguration of the policy just described. It would be
unwise to begin by doing too much, for a great deal will
doubtless be learned, both as to what can and what cannot
be safely attempted, by the early efforts, which must of
necessity be partly experimental in character. At the
very beginning the Government should make clear, beyond
shadow of doubt, its intention to pursue this policy
on lines of the broadest public interest. No reservoir or
canal should ever be built to satisfy selfish personal or
local interests; but only in accordance with the advice
of trained experts, after long investigation has shown the
locality where all the conditions combine to make the
work most needed and fraught with the greatest usefulness
to the community as a whole. There should be no
extravagance, and the believers in the need of irrigation
will most benefit their cause by seeing to it that it is free
from the least taint of excessive or reckless expenditure
of the public moneys.
Whatever the Nation does for the extension of irrigation
should harmonize with, and tend to improve, the
condition of those now living on irrigated land. We are
not at the starting-point of this development. Over two
hundred millions of private capital has already been expended
in the construction of irrigation works, and many
enterprise and ability has been shown in the work itself;
but as much cannot be said in reference to the laws relating
thereto. The security and value of the homes
created depend largely on the stability of titles to water;
but the majority of these rest on the uncertain foundation
of court decisions rendered in ordinary suits at law.
With a few creditable exceptions, the arid States have
failed to provide for the certain and just division of
streams in times of scarcity. Lax and uncertain laws
have made it possible to establish rights to water in excess
of actual uses or necessities, and many streams have
already passed into private ownership, or a control equivalent
to ownership.
Whoever controls a stream practically controls the land
it renders productive, and the doctrine of private ownership
of water apart from land cannot prevail without
causing enduring wrong. The recognition of such ownership,
which has been permitted to grow up in the arid
regions, should give way to a more enlightened and larger
recognition of the rights of the public in the control and
disposal of the public water supplies. Laws founded
upon conditions obtaining in humid regions, where water
is too abundant to justify hoarding it, have no proper
application in a dry country.
In the arid States the only right to water which should
be recognized is that of use. In irrigation this right
should attach to the land reclaimed and be inseparable
therefrom. Granting perpetual water rights to others
than users, without compensation to the public, is open
to all the objections which apply to giving away perpetual
franchises to the public utilities of cities. A few of the
Western States have already recognized this, and have
incorporated in their constitutions the doctrine of perpetual
State ownership of water.
The benefits which have followed the unaided development
in the more difficult and important work yet to be accomplished.
Laws so vitally affecting homes as those which
control the water supply will only be effective when they
have the sanction of the irrigators; reforms can only be
final and satisfactory when they come through the enlightenment
of the people most concerned. The larger
development which national aid insures should, however,
awaken in every arid State the determination to make its
irrigation system equal in justice and effectiveness that of
any country in the civilized world. Nothing could be
more unwise than for isolated communities to continue
to learn everything experimentally, instead of profiting
by what is already known elsewhere. We are dealing
with a new and momentous question, in the pregnant
years while institutions are forming, and what we do will
affect not only the present but future generations.
Our aim should be not simply to reclaim the largest
area of land and provide homes for the largest number of
people, but to create for this new industry the best possible
social and industrial conditions; and this requires
that we not only understand the existing situation, but
avail ourselves of the best experience of the time in the
solution of its problems. A careful study should be
made, by both the Nation and the States, of the irrigation
laws and conditions here and abroad. Ultimately it
will probably be necessary for the Nation to co-operate
with the several arid States in proportion as these States
by their legislation and administration show themselves
fit to receive it.
In Hawaii our aim must be to develop the Territory on
the traditional American lines. We do not wish a region
of large estates tilled by cheap labor; we wish a healthy
American community of men who themselves till the
farms they own. All our legislation for the islands should
average home-maker must afford the true test of the
healthy development of the islands. The land policy
should as nearly as possible be modelled on our homestead
system.
It is a pleasure to say that it is hardly more necessary
to report as to Porto Rico than as to any State or Territory
within our continental limits. The island is thriving
as never before, and it is being administered efficiently and
honestly. Its people are now enjoying liberty and order
under the protection of the United States, and upon this
fact we congratulate them and ourselves. Their material
welfare must be as carefully and jealously considered as
the welfare of any other portion of our country. We
have given them the great gift of free access for their products
to the markets of the United States. I ask the
attention of the Congress to the need of legislation concerning
the public lands of Porto Rico.
In Cuba such progress has been made toward putting
the independent government of the island upon a firm
footing that before the present session of the Congress
closes this will be an accomplished fact, Cuba will then
start as her own mistress; and to the beautiful Queen of
the Antilles, as she unfolds this new page of her destiny,
we extend our heartiest greetings and good wishes. Elsewhere
I have discussed the question of reciprocity. In
the case of Cuba, however, there are weighty reasons of
morality and of national interest why the policy should
be held to have a peculiar application, and I most earnestly
ask your attention to the wisdom, indeed to the
vital need, of providing for a substantial reduction in the
tariff duties on Cuban imports into the United States.
Cuba has in her constitution affirmed what we desired,
that she should stand, in international matters, in closer
and more friendly relations with us than with any other
power; and we are bound by every consideration of honor
interest of her material well-being.
In the Philippines our problem is larger. They are
very rich tropical islands, inhabited by many varying
tribes, representing widely different stages of progress
toward civilization. Our earnest effort is to help these
people upward along the stony and difficult path that
leads to self-government. We hope to make our administration
of the islands honorable to our Nation by making
it of the highest benefit to the Filipinos themselves; and
as an earnest of what we intend to do, we point to what
we have done. Already a greater measure of material
prosperity and of governmental honesty and efficiency
has been attained in the Philippines than ever before in
their history.
It is no light task for a nation to achieve the temperamental
qualities without which the institutions of free
government are but an empty mockery. Our people are
now successfully governing themselves, because for more
than a thousand years they have been slowly fitting themselves,
sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously,
toward this end. What has taken us thirty generations
to achieve, we cannot expect to see another race accomplish
out of hand, especially when large portions of that
race start very far behind the point which our ancestors
had reached even thirty generations ago. In dealing
with the Philippine people we must show both patience
and strength, forbearance and steadfast resolution. Our
aim is high. We do not desire to do for the islanders
merely what has elsewhere been done for tropic peoples
by even the best foreign governments. We hope to do
for them what has never before been done for any people
of the tropics—to make them fit for self-government after
the fashion of the really free nations.
History may safely be challenged to show a single instance
in which a masterful race such as ours, having been
alien land, has behaved to its inhabitants with the disinterested
zeal for their progress that our people have shown
in the Philippines. To leave the islands at this time
would mean that they would fall into a welter of murderous
anarchy. Such desertion of duty on our part would
be a crime against humanity. The character of Governor
Taft and of his associates and subordinates is a proof, if
such be needed, of the sincerity of our effort to give the
islanders a constantly increasing measure of self-government,
exactly as fast as they show themselves fit to exercise
it. Since the civil government was established not
an appointment has been made in the islands with any
reference to considerations of political influence, or to
aught else save the fitness of the man and the needs of
the service.
In our anxiety for the welfare and progress of the
Philippines, it may be that here and there we have gone
too rapidly in giving them local self-government. It is
on this side that our error, if any, has been committed.
No competent observer, sincerely desirous of finding out
the facts and influenced only by a desire for the welfare
of the natives, can assert that we have not gone far
enough. We have gone to the very verge of safety in
hastening the process. To have taken a single step
farther or faster in advance would have been folly and
weakness, and might well have been crime. We are extremely
anxious that the natives shall show the power of
governing themselves. We are anxious, first for their
sakes, and next, because it relieves us of a great burden.
There need not be the slightest fear of our not continuing
to give them all the liberty for which they are fit.
The only fear is lest in our over-anxiety we give them a
degree of independence for which they are unfit, thereby
inviting reaction and disaster. As fast as there is any
reasonable hope that in a given district the people can
that district. There is not a locality fitted for self-government
which has not received it. But it may well
be that in certain cases it will have to be withdrawn because
the inhabitants show themselves unfit to exercise
it; such instances have already occurred. In other
words, there is not the slightest chance of our failing
to show a sufficiently humanitarian spirit. The danger
comes in the opposite direction.
There are still troubles ahead in the islands. The
insurrection has become an affair of local banditti and
marauders, who deserve no higher regard than the brigands
of portions of the Old World. Encouragement,
direct or indirect, to these insurrectos stands on the same
footing as encouragement to hostile Indians in the days
when we still had Indian wars. Exactly as our aim is to
give to the Indian who remains peaceful the fullest and
amplest consideration, but to have it understood that we
will show no weakness if he goes on the warpath, so we
must make it evident, unless we are false to our own
traditions and to the demands of civilization and humanity,
that while we will do everything in our power for the
Filipino who is peaceful, we will take the sternest measures
with the Filipino who follows the path of the insurrecto
and the ladrone.
The heartiest praise is due to large numbers of the
natives of the islands for their steadfast loyalty. The
Macabebes have been conspicuous for their courage and
devotion to the flag. I recommend that the Secretary of
War be empowered to take some systematic action in the
way of aiding those of these men who are crippled in the
service and the families of those who are killed.
The time has come when there should be additional
legislation for the Philippines. Nothing better can be
done for the islands than to introduce industrial enterprises.
Nothing would benefit them so much as throwing
between idleness and mischief is proverbial, and the opportunity
to do remunerative work is one of the surest preventives
of war. Of course no business man will go into
the Philippines unless it is to his interest to do so; and it
is immensely to the interest of the islands that he should
go in. It is therefore necessary that the Congress should
pass laws by which the resources of the islands can be
developed; so that franchises (for limited terms of years)
can be granted to companies doing business in them, and
every encouragement be given to the incoming of business
men of every kind.
Not to permit this is to do a wrong to the Philippines.
The franchises must be granted and the business permitted
only under regulations which will guarantee the
islands against any kind of improper exploitation. But
the vast natural wealth of the islands must be developed,
and the capital willing to develop it must be given the
opportunity. The field must be thrown open to individual
enterprise, which has been the real factor in the
development of every region over which our flag has
flown. It is urgently necessary to enact suitable laws
dealing with general transportation, mining, banking,
currency, homesteads, and the use and ownership of the
lands and timber. These laws will give free play to industrial
enterprise; and the commercial development
which will surely follow will afford to the people of the
islands the best proofs of the sincerity of our desire to aid
them.
I call your attention most earnestly to the crying need
of a cable to Hawaii and the Philippines, to be continued
from the Philippines to points in Asia. We should not
defer a day longer than necessary the construction of
such a cable. It is demanded not merely for commercial
but for political and military considerations.
Either the Congress should immediately provide for the
construction of a Government cable, or else an arrangement
should be made by which like advantages to those
accruing from a Government cable may be secured to the
Government by contract with a private cable company.
No single great material work which remains to be
undertaken on this continent is of such consequence to
the American people as the building of a canal across the
Isthmus connecting North and South America. Its importance
to the Nation is by no means limited merely to
its material effects upon our business prosperity; and yet
with view to these effects alone it would be to the last
degree important for us immediately to begin it. While
its beneficial effects would perhaps be most marked upon
the Pacific Coast and the Gulf and South Atlantic States,
it would also greatly benefit other sections. It is emphatically
a work which it is for the interest of the entire
country to begin and complete as soon as possible; it is
one of those great works which only a great nation can
undertake with prospects of success, and which when
done are not only permanent assets in the nation's material
interests, but standing monuments to its constructive
ability.
I am glad to be able to announce to you that our
negotiations on this subject with Great Britain, conducted
on both sides in a spirit of friendliness and mutual good
will and respect, have resulted in my being able to lay
before the Senate a treaty which if ratified will enable us
to begin preparations for an Isthmian canal at any time,
and which guarantees to this Nation every right that it
has ever asked in connection with the canal. In this
treaty, the old Clayton-Bulwer treaty, so long recognized
as inadequate to supply the base for the construction and
maintenance of a necessarily American ship canal, is
abrogated. It specifically provides that the United
the responsibility of safeguarding the canal and shall
regulate its neutral use by all nations on terms of equality
without the guaranty or interference of any outside nation
from any quarter. The signed treaty will at once be laid
before the Senate, and if approved the Congress can then
proceed to give effect to the advantages it secures us by
providing for the building of the canal.
The true end of every great and free people should be
self-respecting peace; and this Nation most earnestly desires
sincere and cordial friendship with all others. Over
the entire world, of recent years, wars between the great
civilized powers have become less and less frequent.
Wars with barbarous or semi-barbarous peoples come in
an entirely different category, being merely a most regrettable
but necessary international police duty which
must be performed for the sake of the welfare of mankind.
Peace can only be kept with certainty where both
sides wish to keep it; but more and more the civilized
peoples are realizing the wicked folly of war and are attaining
that condition of just and intelligent regard for
the rights of others which will in the end, as we hope
and believe, make world-wide peace possible. The peace
conference at The Hague gave definite expression to
this hope and belief and marked a stride toward their
attainment.
This same peace conference acquiesced in our statement
of the Monroe Doctrine as compatible with the
purposes and aims of the conference.
The Monroe Doctrine should be the cardinal feature of
the foreign policy of all the nations of the two Americas,
as it is of the United States. Just seventy-eight years
have passed since President Monroe in his Annual Message
announced that "The American continents are
henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future
the Monroe Doctrine is a declaration that there must be
no territorial aggrandizement by any non-American power
at the expense of any American power on American soil.
It is in no wise intended as hostile to any nation in the
Old World. Still less is it intended to give cover to any
aggression by one New World power at the expense of
any other. It is simply a step, and a long step, toward
assuring the universal peace of the world by securing the
possibility of permanent peace on this hemisphere.
During the past century other influences have established
the permanence and independence of the smaller
states of Europe. Through the Monroe Doctrine we
hope to be able to safeguard like independence and secure
like permanence for the lesser among the New World
nations.
This doctrine has nothing to do with the commercial
relations of any American power, save that it in truth
allows each of them to form such as it desires. In other
words, it is really a guaranty of the commercial independence
of the Americas. We do not ask under this doctrine
for any exclusive commercial dealings with any other
American state. We do not guarantee any state against
punishment if it misconducts itself, provided that punishment
does not take the form of the acquisition of territory
by any non-American power.
Our attitude in Cuba is a sufficient guaranty of our own
good faith. We have not the slightest desire to secure
any territory at the expense of any of our neighbors.
We wish to work with them hand in hand, so that all of
us may be uplifted together, and we rejoice over the good
fortune of any of them, we gladly hail their material
prosperity and political stability, and are concerned and
alarmed if any of them fall into industrial or political
chaos. We do not wish to see any Old World military
power grow up on this continent, or to be compelled to
Americas can prosper best if left to work out their own
salvation in their own way.
The work of upbuilding the Navy must be steadily continued.
No one point of our policy, foreign or domestic,
is more important than this to the honor and material
welfare, and above all to the peace, of our Nation in the
future. Whether we desire it or not, we must henceforth
recognize that we have international duties no less than
international rights. Even if our flag were hauled down
in the Philippines and Porto Rico, even if we decided not
to build the Isthmian Canal, we should need a thoroughly
trained Navy of adequate size, or else be prepared definitely
and for all time to abandon the idea that our
Nation is among, those whose sons go down to the sea in
ships. Unless our commerce is always to be carried in
foreign bottoms, we must have war craft to protect it.
Inasmuch, however, as the American people have no
thought of abandoning the path upon which they have
entered, and especially in view of the fact that the building
of the Isthmian Canal is fast becoming one of the
matters which the whole people are united in demanding,
it is imperative that our Navy should be put and kept in
the highest state of efficiency, and should be made to
answer to our growing needs. So far from being in any
way a provocation to war, an adequate and highly trained
Navy is the best guaranty against war, the cheapest and
most effective peace insurance. The cost of building and
maintaining such a Navy represents the very lightest
premium for insuring peace which this Nation can possibly
pay.
Probably no other great nation in the world is so
anxious for peace as we are. There is not a single civilized
power which has anything whatever to fear from
aggressiveness on our part. All we want is peace; and
respect for our rights from others which we are eager and
anxious to extend to their rights in return, to insure fair
treatment to us commercially, and to guarantee the safety
of the American people.
Our people intend to abide by the Monroe Doctrine
and to insist upon it as the one sure means of securing
the peace of the Western Hemisphere. The Navy offers
us the only means of making our insistence upon the
Monroe Doctrine anything but a subject of derision to
whatever nation chooses to disregard it. We desire the
peace which comes as of right to the just man armed;
not the peace granted on terms of ignominy to the craven
and the weakling.
It is not possible to improvise a Navy after war breaks
out. The ships must be built and the men trained long
in advance. Some auxiliary vessels can be turned into
makeshifts which will do in default of any better for the
minor work, and a proportion of raw men can be mixed
with the highly trained, their shortcomings being made
good by the skill of their fellows; but the efficient fighting
force of the Navy when pitted against an equal
opponent will be found almost exclusively in the warships
that have been regularly built and in the officers
and men who through years of faithful performance of
sea duty have been trained to handle their formidable but
complex and delicate weapons with the highest efficiency.
In the late war with Spain the ships that dealt the decisive
blows at Manila and Santiago had been launched from
two to fourteen years, and they were able to do as they
did because the men in the conning towers, the gun
turrets, and the engine-rooms had through long years of
practice at sea learned how to do their duty.
Our present Navy was begun in 1882. At that period
our Navy consisted of a collection of antiquated wooden
ships, already almost as out of place against modern war
as the ships of Tromp and Blake. Nor at that
time did we have men fit to handle a modern man-of-war.
Under the wise legislation of the Congress and the successful
administration of a succession of patriotic Secretaries
of the Navy, belonging to both political parties, the
work of upbuilding the Navy went on, and ships equal to
any in the world of their kind were continually added;
and what was even more important, these ships were
exercised at sea singly and in squadrons until the men
aboard them were able to get the best possible service
out of them. The result was seen in the short war with
Spain, which was decided with such rapidity because of
the infinitely greater preparedness of our Navy than of
the Spanish Navy.
While awarding the fullest honor to the men who actually
commanded and manned the ships which destroyed
the Spanish sea forces in the Philippines and in Cuba, we
must not forget that an equal meed of praise belongs to
those without whom neither blow could have been struck.
The Congressmen who voted years in advance the money
to lay down the ships, to build the guns, to buy the
armor-plate; the Department officials and the business
men and wage workers who furnished what the Congress
had authorized; the Secretaries of the Navy who asked
for and expended the appropriations; and finally the
officers who, in fair weather and foul, on actual sea service,
trained and disciplined the crews of the ships when
there was no war in sight—all are entitled to a full share
in the glory of Manila and Santiago, and the respect accorded
by every true American to those who wrought
such signal triumph for our country. It was forethought
and preparation which secured us the overwhelming
triumph of 1898. If we fail to show forethought and
preparation now, there may come a time when disaster
will befall us instead of triumph; and should this time
the accident of events puts in supreme command at the
moment, but upon those who have failed to prepare in
advance.
There should be no cessation in the work of completing
our Navy. So far ingenuity has been wholly unable to devise
a substitute for the great war craft whose hammering
guns beat out the mastery of the high seas. It is unsafe
and unwise not to provide this year for several additional
battleships and heavy armored cruisers, with auxiliary
and lighter craft in proportion; for the exact numbers and
character I refer you to the report of the Secretary of the
Navy. But there is something we need even more than
additional ships, and this is additional officers and men.
To provide battleships and cruisers and then lay them
up, with the expectation of leaving them unmanned until
they are needed in actual war, would be worse than folly;
it would be a crime against the Nation.
To send any warship against a competent enemy unless
those aboard it have been trained by years of actual sea
service, including incessant gunnery practice, would be
to invite not merely disaster, but the bitterest shame and
humiliation. Four thousand additional seamen and one
thousand additional marines should be provided; and an
increase in the officers should be provided by making a
large addition to the classes at Annapolis. There is one
small matter which should be mentioned in connection
with Annapolis. The pretentious and unmeaning title
of "naval cadet" should be abolished; the title of "midshipman,"
full of historic association, should be restored.
Even in time of peace a warship should be used until
it wears out, for only so can it be kept fit to respond to
any emergency. The officers and men alike should be
kept as much as possible on blue water, for it is there only
they can learn their duties as they should be learned.
The big vessels should be manœuvred in squadrons containing
of cruisers and scouts. The torpedo boats should
be handled by the younger officers in such manner as will
best fit the latter to take responsibility and meet the
emergencies of actual warfare.
Every detail ashore which can be performed by a civilian
should be so performed, the officer being kept for his
special duty in the sea service. Above all, gunnery practice
should be unceasing. It is important to have our
Navy of adequate size, but it is even more important
that ship for ship it should equal in efficiency any navy
in the world. This is possible only with highly drilled
crews and officers, and this in turn imperatively demands
continuous and progressive instruction in target practice,
ship handling, squadron tactics, and general discipline.
Our ships must be assembled in squadrons actively cruising
away from harbors and never long at anchor. The
resulting wear upon engines and hulls must be endured;
a battleship worn out in long training of officers and men
is well paid for by the results, while, on the other hand,
no matter in how excellent condition, it is useless if the
crew be not expert.
We now have seventeen battleships appropriated for,
of which nine are completed and have been commissioned
for actual service. The remaining eight will be ready in
from two to four years, but it will take at least that time
to recruit and train the men to fight them. It is of vast
concern that we have trained crews ready for the vessels
by the time they are commissioned. Good ships and
good guns are simply good weapons, and the best weapons
are useless save in the hands of men who know how to
fight with them. The men must be trained and drilled
under a thorough and well-planned system of progressive
instruction, while the recruiting must be carried on with
still greater vigor. Every effort must be made to exalt
the main function of the officer—the command of men.
be assigned to the combatant branches, the line and
marines.
Many of the essentials of success are already recognized
by the General Board, which, as the central office of a
growing staff, is moving steadily toward a proper war
efficiency and a proper efficiency of the whole Navy,
under the Secretary. This General Board, by fostering
the creation of a general staff, is providing for the official
and then the general recognition of our altered conditions
as a Nation and of the true meaning of a great war fleet,
which meaning is, first, the best men, and, second, the
best ships.
The Naval Militia forces are State organizations, and
are trained for coast service, and in event of war they will
constitute the inner line of defence. They should receive
hearty encouragement from the General Government.
But in addition we should at once provide for a National
Naval Reserve, organized and trained under the direction
of the Navy Department, and subject to the call of the
Chief Executive whenever war becomes imminent. It
should be a real auxiliary to the naval sea-going peace
establishment, and offer material to be drawn on at once
for manning our ships in time of war. It should be composed
of graduates of the Naval Academy, graduates of
the Naval Militia, officers and crews of coast-line steamers,
longshore schooners, fishing vessels, and steam yachts,
together with the coast population about such centres as
life-saving stations and lighthouses.
The American people must either build and maintain
an adequate Navy or else make up their minds definitely
to accept a secondary position in international affairs, not
merely in political, but in commercial, matters. It has
been well said that there is no surer way of courting
national disaster than to be "opulent, aggressive, and
unarmed."
It is not necessary to increase our Army beyond its
present size at this time. But it is necessary to keep it
at the highest point of efficiency. The individual units
who as officers and enlisted men compose this Army, are,
we have good reason to believe, at least as efficient as
those of any other army in the entire world. It is our
duty to see that their training is of a kind to insure the
highest possible expression of power to these units when
acting in combination.
The conditions of modern war are such as to make an
infinitely heavier demand than ever before upon the individual
character and capacity of the officer and the enlisted
man, and to make it far more difficult for men to act
together with effect. At present the fighting must be
done in extended order, which means that each man must
act for himself and at the same time act in combination
with others with whom he is no longer in the old-fashioned
elbow-to-elbow touch. Under such conditions a few men
of the highest excellence are worth more than many men
without the special skill which is only found as the result
of special training applied to men of exceptional physique
and morale. But nowadays the most valuable fighting
man and the most difficult to perfect is the rifleman who
is also a skilful and daring rider.
The proportion of our cavalry regiments has wisely
been increased. The American cavalryman, trained to
manœuvre and fight with equal facility on foot and on
horseback, is the best type of soldier for general purposes
now to be found in the world. The ideal cavalryman of
the present day is a man who can fight on foot as effectively
as the best infantryman, and who is in addition
unsurpassed in the care and management of his horse and
in his ability to fight on horseback.
A general staff should be created. As for the present
staff and supply departments, they should be filled by
details from the line, the men so detailed returning after
have the senior grades of the Army composed of men
who have come to fill the positions by the mere fact of
seniority. A system should be adopted by which there
shall be an elimination grade by grade of those who seem
unfit to render the best service in the next grade. Justice
to the veterans of the Civil War who are still in the Army
would seem to require that in the matter of retirements
they be given by law the same privileges accorded to
their comrades in the Navy.
The process of elimination of the least fit should be conducted
in a manner that would render it practically impossible
to apply political or social pressure on behalf of
any candidate, so that each man may be judged purely
on his own merits. Pressure for the promotion of civil
officials for political reasons is bad enough, but it is tenfold
worse where applied on behalf of officers of the Army
or Navy. Every promotion and every detail under the
War Department must be made solely with regard to
the good of the service and to the capacity and merit of
the man himself. No pressure, political, social, or personal,
of any kind, will be permitted to exercise the least
effect in any question of promotion or detail; and if
there is reason to believe that such pressure is exercised
at the instigation of the officer concerned, it will be held
to militate against him. In our Army we cannot afford
to have rewards or duties distributed save on the simple
ground that those who by their own merits are entitled
to the rewards get them, and that those who are peculiarly
fit to do the duties are chosen to perform them.
Every effort should be made to bring the Army to a
constantly increasing state of efficiency. When on actual
service no work save that directly in the line of such service
should be required. The paper work in the Army,
as in the Navy, should be greatly reduced. What is
needed is proved power of command and capacity to
prevent dry rot in the transportation and commissary
departments.
Our Army is so small and so much scattered that it is
very difficult to give the higher officers (as well as the
lower officers and the enlisted men) a chance to practice
manœuvres in mass and on a comparatively large scale.
In time of need no amount of individual excellence would
avail against the paralysis which would follow inability to
work as a coherent whole, under skilful and daring leadership.
The Congress should provide means whereby it
will be possible to have field exercises by at least a division
of regulars, and if possible also a division of national
guardsmen, once a year. These exercises might take the
form of field manœuvres; or, if on the Gulf coast or the
Pacific or Atlantic seaboard, or in the region of the Great
Lakes, the army corps when assembled could be marched
from some inland point to some point on the water, there
embarked, disembarked after a couple of days' journey at
some other point, and again marched inland. Only by
actual handling and providing for men in masses while
they are marching, camping, embarking, and disembarking,
will it be possible to train the higher officers to perform
their duties well and smoothly.
A great debt is owing from the public to the men of
the Army and Navy. They should be so treated as to
enable them to reach the highest point of efficiency, so
that they may be able to respond instantly to any
demand made upon them to sustain the interests of the
Nation and the honor of the flag. The individual American
enlisted man is probably on the whole a more formidable
fighting man than the regular of any other army.
Every consideration should be shown him, and in return
the highest standard of usefulness should be exacted
from him. It is well worth while for the Congress to
consider whether the pay of enlisted men upon second
correspond with the increased value of the veteran soldier.
Much good has already come from the act reorganizing
the Army, passed early in the present year. The three
prime reforms, all of them of literally inestimable value,
are, first, the substitution of four-year details from the
line for permanent appointments in the so-called staff
divisions; second, the establishment of a corps of artillery
with a chief at the head; third, the establishment of
a maximum and minimum limit for the Army. It would
be difficult to overestimate the improvement in the efficiency
of our Army which these three reforms are making,
and have in part already effected.
The reorganization provided for by the act has been
substantially accomplished. The improved conditions in
the Philippines have enabled the War Department materially
to reduce the military charge upon our revenue
and to arrange the number of soldiers so as to bring this
number much nearer to the minimum than to the maximum
limit established by law. There is, however, need
of supplementary legislation. Thorough military education
must be provided, and in addition to the regulars the
advantages of this education should be given to the officers
of the National Guard and others in civil life who
desire intelligently to fit themselves for possible military
duty. The officers should be given the chance to perfect
themselves by study in the higher branches of this art.
At West Point the education should be of the kind most
apt to turn out men who are good in actual field service;
too much stress should not be laid on mathematics, nor
should proficiency therein be held to establish the right
of entry to a corps d' élite. The typical American officer
of the best kind need not be a good mathematician; but
he must be able to master himself, to control others,
and to show boldness and fertility of resource in every
emergency.
Action should be taken in reference to the militia and
to the raising of volunteer forces. Our militia law is
obsolete and worthless. The organization and armament
of the National Guard of the several States, which are
treated as militia in the appropriations by the Congress,
should be made identical with those provided for the
regular forces. The obligations and duties of the Guard
in time of war should be carefully defined, and a system
established by law under which the method of procedure
of raising volunteer forces should be prescribed in advance.
It is utterly impossible in the excitement and
haste of impending war to do this satisfactorily if the
arrangements have not been made long beforehand.
Provision should be made for utilizing in the first volunteer
organizations called out the training of those citizens
who have already had experience under arms, and especially
for the selection in advance of the officers of any
force which may be raised; for careful selection of the
kind necessary is impossible after the outbreak of war.
That the Army is not at all a mere instrument of destruction
has been shown during the last three years. In
the Philippines, Cuba, and Porto Rico it has proved itself
a great constructive force, a most potent implement for
the upbuilding of a peaceful civilization.
No other citizens deserve so well of the Republic as the
veterans, the survivors of those who saved the Union.
They did the one deed which if left undone would have
meant that all else in our history went for nothing. But
for their steadfast prowess in the greatest crisis of our
history, all our annals would be meaningless, and our
great experiment in popular freedom and self-government
a gloomy failure. Moreover, they not only left us a
united Nation, but they left us also as a heritage the
memory of the mighty deeds by which the Nation was
kept united. We are now indeed one Nation, one in fact
flag which is the symbol of national greatness and unity;
and the very completeness of our union enables us all, in
every part of the country, to glory in the valor shown
alike by the sons of the North and the sons of the South
in the times that tried men's souls.
The men who in the last three years have done so well
in the East and the West Indies and on the mainland of
Asia have shown that this remembrance is not lost. In
any serious crisis the United States must rely for the
great mass of its fighting men upon the volunteer soldiery
who do not make a permanent profession of the military
career; and whenever such a crisis arises the deathless
memories of the Civil War will give to Americans the lift
of lofty purpose which comes to those whose fathers have
stood valiantly in the forefront of the battle.
The merit system of making appointments is in its
essence as democratic and American as the common-school
system itself. It simply means that in clerical
and other positions where the duties are entirely nonpolitical,
all applicants should have a fair field and no
favor, each standing on his merits as he is able to show
them by practical test. Written competitive examinations
offer the only available means in many cases for
applying this system. In other cases, as where laborers
are employed, a system of registration undoubtedly can
be widely extended. There are, of course, places where
the written competitive examination cannot be applied,
and others where it offers by no means an ideal solution,
but where under existing political conditions it is, though
an imperfect means, yet the best present means of getting
satisfactory results.
Wherever the conditions have permitted the application
of the merit system in its fullest and widest sense, the
gain to the Government has been immense. The navy-yards
any other branches of the Government, the great gain in
economy, efficiency, and honesty due to the enforcement
of this principle.
I recommend the passage of a law which will extend
the classified service to the District of Columbia, or will
at least enable the President thus to extend it. In my
judgment all laws providing for the temporary employment
of clerks should hereafter contain a provision that
they be selected under the Civil Service Law.
It is important to have this system obtain at home, but
it is even more important to have it applied rigidly in
our insular possessions. Not an office should be filled
in the Philippines or Porto Rico with any regard to the
man's partisan affiliations or services, with any regard to
the political, social, or personal influence which he may
have at his command; in short, heed should be paid to
absolutely nothing save the man's own character and
capacity and the needs of the service.
The administration of these islands should be as wholly
free from the suspicion of partisan politics as the administration
of the Army and Navy. All that we ask from
the public servant in the Philippines or Porto Rico is that
he reflect honor on his country by the way in which he
makes that country's rule a benefit to the peoples who
have come under it. This is all that we should ask, and
we cannot afford to be content with less.
The merit system is simply one method of securing
honest and efficient administration of the Government;
and in the long run the sole justification of any type of
government lies in its proving itself both honest and
efficient.
The consular service is now organized under the provisions
of a law passed in 1856, which is entirely inadequate
to existing conditions. The interest shown by so
reorganization of the service is heartily commended to
your attention. Several bills providing for a new consular
service have in recent years been submitted to the
Congress. They are based upon the just principle that
appointments to the service should be made only after a
practical test of the applicant's fitness, that promotions
should be governed by trustworthiness, adaptability, and
zeal in the performance of duty, and that the tenure of
office should be unaffected by partisan considerations.
The guardianship and fostering of our rapidly expanding
foreign commerce, the protection of American citizens
resorting to foreign countries in lawful pursuit of their
affairs, and the maintenance of the dignity of the Nation
abroad, combine to make it essential that our consuls
should be men of character, knowledge, and enterprise.
It is true that the service is now, in the main, efficient,
but a standard of excellence cannot be permanently maintained
until the principles set forth in the bills heretofore
submitted to the Congress on this subject are enacted
into law.
In my judgment the time has arrived when we should
definitely make up our minds to recognize the Indian as
an individual and not as a member of a tribe. The General
Allotment Act is a mighty pulverizing engine to
break up the tribal mass. It acts directly upon the
family and the individual. Under its provisions some
sixty thousand Indians have already become citizens of
the United States. We should now break up the tribal
funds, doing for them what allotment does for the tribal
lands; that is, they should be divided into individual
holdings. There will be a transition period during which
the funds will in many cases have to be held in trust.
This is the case also with the lands. A stop should be
put upon the indiscriminate permission to Indians to
make the Indian work like any other man on his own
ground. The marriage laws of the Indians should be
made the same as those of the whites.
In the schools the education should be elementary and
largely industrial. The need of higher education among
the Indians is very, very limited. On the reservation
care should be taken to try to suit the teaching to the
needs of the particular Indian. There is no use in attempting
to induce agriculture in a country suited only
for cattle raising, where the Indian should be made a
stock grower. The ration system, which is merely the
corral and the reservation system, is highly detrimental
to the Indians. It promotes beggary, perpetuates pauperism,
and stifles industry. It is an effectual barrier to progress.
It must continue to a greater or less degree as
long as tribes are herded on reservations and have everything
in common. The Indian should be treated as an
individual—like the white man. During the change of
treatment inevitable hardships will occur; every effort
should be made to minimize these hardships; but we
should not because of them hesitate to make the change.
There should be a continuous reduction in the number
of agencies.
In dealing with the aboriginal races few things are more
important than to preserve them from the terrible physical
and moral degradation resulting from the liquor traffic.
We are doing all we can to save our own Indian tribes
from this evil. Wherever by international agreement
this same end can be attained as regards races where we
do not possess exclusive control, every effort should be
made to bring it about.
I bespeak the most cordial support from the Congress
and the people for the St. Louis Exposition to
Louisiana Purchase. This purchase was the greatest instance
of expansion in our history. It definitely decided
that we were to become a great continental republic, by
far the foremost power in the Western Hemisphere. It
is one of three or four great landmarks in our history—the
great turning-points in our development. It is eminently
fitting that all our people should join with heartiest goodwill
in commemorating it, and the citizens of St. Louis,
of Missouri, of all the adjacent region, are entitled to
every aid in making the celebration a noteworthy event
in our annals. We earnestly hope that foreign nations
will appreciate the deep interest our country takes in this
Exposition, and our view of its importance from every
standpoint, and that they will participate in securing its
success. The National Government should be represented
by a full and complete set of exhibits.
The people of Charleston, with great energy and civic
spirit, are carrying on an Exposition which will continue
throughout most of the present session of the Congress.
I heartily commend this Exposition to the good will of
the people. It deserves all the encouragement that can
be given it. The managers of the Charleston Exposition
have requested the Cabinet officers to place thereat the
Government exhibits which have been at Buffalo, promising
to pay the necessary expenses. I have taken the responsibility
of directing that this be done, for I feel that
it is due to Charleston to help her in her praiseworthy
effort. In my opinion the management should not be
required to pay all these expenses. I earnestly recommend
that the Congress appropriate at once the small
sum necessary for this purpose.
The Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo has just
closed. Both from the industrial and the artistic standpoint
and useful, not merely to Buffalo but to the United
States. The terrible tragedy of the President's assassination
interfered materially with its being a financial success.
The Exposition was peculiarly in harmony with the trend
of our public policy, because it represented an effort to
bring into closer touch all the peoples of the Western
Hemisphere, and give them an increasing sense of unity.
Such an effort was a genuine service to the entire American
public.
The advancement of the highest interests of national
science and learning and the custody of objects of art
and of the valuable results of scientific expeditions conducted
by the United States have been committed to the
Smithsonian Institution. In furtherance of its declared
purpose—for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge
among men "—the Congress has from time to time given
it other important functions. Such trusts have been
executed by the Institution with notable fidelity. There
should be no halt in the work of the Institution, in accordance
with the plans which its Secretary has presented,
for the preservation of the vanishing races of
great North American animals in the National Zoölogical
Park. The urgent needs of the National Museum are
recommended to the favorable consideration of the
Congress.
Perhaps the most characteristic educational movement
of the past fifty years is that which has created the modern
public library and developed it into broad and active service.
There are now over five thousand public libraries
in the United States, the product of this period. In
addition to accumulating material, they are also striving
by organization, by improvement in method, and by cooperation,
to give greater efficiency to the material they
unnecessary duplication in process to reduce the cost of
its administration.
In these efforts they naturally look for assistance to the
Federal library, which, though still the Library of Congress,
and so entitled, is the one national library of the
United States. Already the largest single collection of
books on the Western Hemisphere, and certain to increase
more rapidly than any other through purchase,
exchange, and the operation of the copyright law, this
library has a unique opportunity to render to the libraries
of this country—to American scholarship—service of the
highest importance. It is housed in a building which is
the largest and most magnificent yet erected for library
uses. Resources are now being provided which will develop
the collection properly, equip it with the apparatus
and service necessary to its effective use, render its bibliographic
work widely available, and enable it to become,
not merely a centre of research, but the chief factor in
great co-operative efforts for the diffusion of knowledge
and the advancement of learning.
For the sake of good administration, sound economy,
and the advancement of science, the Census Office as now
constituted should be made a permanent Government
bureau. This would insure better, cheaper, and more
satisfactory work, in the interest not only of our business
but of statistic, economic, and social science.
The remarkable growth of the postal service is shown
in the fact that its revenues have doubled and its expenditures
have nearly doubled within twelve years. Its
progressive development compels constantly increasing
outlay, but in this period of business energy and prosperity
its receipts grow so much faster than its expenses
that the annual deficit has been steadily reduced from
postal advances the success of rural free delivery wherever
established has been so marked, and actual experience has
made its benefits so plain, that the demand for its extension
is general and urgent.
It is just that the great agricultural population should
share in the improvement of the service. The number
of rural routes now in operation is 6009, practically all
established within three years, and there are 6000 applications
awaiting action. It is expected that the number
in operation at the close of the current fiscal year will
reach 8600. The mail will then be daily carried to the
doors of 5,700,000 of our people who have heretofore
been dependent upon distant offices, and one-third of all
that portion of the country which is adapted to it will be
covered by this kind of service.
The full measure of postal progress which might be
realized has long been hampered and obstructed by the
heavy burden imposed on the Government through the
intrenched and well-understood abuses which have grown
up in connection with second-class mail matter. The
extent of this burden appears when it is stated that while
the second-class matter makes nearly three-fifths of the
weight of all the mail, it paid for the last fiscal year only
$4,294,445 of the aggregate postal revenue of $111,631,193.
If the pound rate of postage, which produces the
large loss thus entailed, and which was fixed by the Congress
with the purpose of encouraging the dissemination
of public information, were limited to the legitimate newspapers
and periodicals actually contemplated by the law,
no just exception could be taken. That expense would
be the recognized and accepted cost of a liberal public
policy deliberately adopted for a justifiable end. But
much of the matter which enjoys the privileged rate is
wholly outside of the intent of the law, and has secured
admission only through an evasion of its requirements or
included matter is estimated by postal experts to be one-half
of the whole volume of second-class mail. If it be
only one-third or one-quarter, the magnitude of the burden
is apparent. The Post-Office Department has now
undertaken to remove the abuses so far as is possible by
a stricter application of the law; and it should be sustained
in its effort.
Owing to the rapid growth of our power and our interests
on the Pacific, whatever happens in China must be
of the keenest national concern to us.
The general terms of the settlement of the questions
growing out of the anti-foreign uprisings in China of 1900,
having been formulated in a joint note addressed to China
by the representatives of the injured powers in December
last, were promptly accepted by the Chinese Government.
After protracted conferences the plenipotentiaries of the
several powers were able to sign a final protocol with the
Chinese plenipotentiaries on the 7th of last September,
setting forth the measures taken by China in compliance
with the demands of the joint note, and expressing their
satisfaction therewith. It will be laid before the Congress,
with a report of the plenipotentiary on behalf of
the United States, Mr. William Woodville Rockhill, to
whom high praise is due for the tact, good judgment, and
energy he has displayed in performing an exceptionally
difficult and delicate task.
The agreement reached disposes in a manner satisfactory
to the powers of the various grounds of complaint, and
will contribute materially to better future relations between
China and the powers. Reparation has been made
by China for the murder of foreigners during the uprising,
and punishment has been inflicted on the officials, however
high in rank, recognized as responsible for or having
participated in the outbreak. Official examinations have
which foreigners have been murdered or cruelly treated,
and edicts have been issued making all officials directly
responsible for the future safety of foreigners and for the
suppression of violence against them.
Provisions have been made for insuring the future safety
of the foreign representatives in Peking by setting aside
for their exclusive use a quarter of the city which the
powers can make defensible and in which they can if
necessary maintain permanent military guards by dismantling
the military works between the capital and the
sea; and by allowing the temporary maintenance of foreign
military posts along this line. An edict has been issued
by the Emperor of China prohibiting for two years the
importation of arms and ammunition into China. China
has agreed to pay adequate indemnities to the states,
societies, and individuals for the losses sustained by them,
and for the expenses of the military expeditions sent by
the various powers to protect life and restore order.
Under the provisions of the joint note of December,
1900, China has agreed to revise the treaties of commerce
and navigation and to take such other steps for the purpose
of facilitating foreign trade as the foreign powers
may decide to be needed.
The Chinese Government has agreed to participate
financially in the work of bettering the water approaches
to Shanghai and to Tientsin, the centres of foreign trade
m central and northern China, and an international conservancy
board, in which the Chinese Government is
largely represented, has been provided for the improvement
of the Shanghai River and the control of its navigation.
In the same line of commercial advantages a
revision of the present tariff on imports has been assented
to for the purpose of substituting specific for ad valorem
duties, and an expert has been sent abroad on the part
of the United States to assist in this work. A list of
and rice, gold and silver coin and bullion, has also been
agreed upon in the settlement.
During these troubles our Government has unswervingly
advocated moderation, and has materially aided in
bringing about an adjustment which tends to enhance the
welfare of China and to lead to a more beneficial intercourse
between the Empire and the modern world; while
in the critical period of revolt and massacre we did our
full share in safeguarding life and property, restoring
order, and vindicating the national interest and honor.
It behooves us to continue in these paths, doing what
lies in our power to foster feelings of good will, and leaving
no effort untried to work out the great policy of full
and fair intercourse between China and the nations, on a
footing of equal rights and advantages to all. We advocate
the "open door "with all that it implies; not merely
the procurement of enlarged commercial opportunities on
the coasts, but access to the interior by the waterways with
which China has been so extraordinarily favored. Only
by bringing the people of China into peaceful and friendly
community of trade with all the peoples of the earth can
the work now auspiciously begun be carried to fruition.
In the attainment of this purpose we necessarily claim
parity of treatment, under the conventions, throughout
the Empire for our trade and our citizens with those of
all other powers.
We view with lively interest and keen hopes of beneficial
results the proceedings of the Pan-American Congress,
convoked at the invitation of Mexico, and now
sitting at the Mexican capital. The delegates of the
United States are under the most liberal instructions to
co-operate with their colleagues in all matters promising
advantage to the great family of American commonwealths,
as well in their relations among themselves as in
the world at large.
My predecessor communicated to the Congress the fact
that the Weil and La Abra awards against Mexico have
been adjudged by the highest courts of our country to
have been obtained through fraud and perjury on the
part of the claimants, and that in accordance with the
acts of the Congress the money remaining in the hands
of the Secretary of State on these awards has been returned
to Mexico. A considerable portion of the money
received from Mexico on these awards had been paid by
this Government to the claimants before the decision of
the courts was rendered. My judgment is that the Congress
should return to Mexico an amount equal to the
sums thus already paid to the claimants.
The death of Queen Victoria caused the people of the
United States deep and heartfelt sorrow, to which the
Government gave full expression. When President
McKinley died, our Nation in turn received from every
quarter of the British Empire expressions of grief and
sympathy no less sincere. The death of the Empress
Dowager Frederick of Germany also aroused the genuine
sympathy of the American people; and this sympathy
was cordially reciprocated by Germany when the President
was assassinated. Indeed, from every quarter of
the civilized world we received, at the time of the President's
death, assurances of such grief and regard as to
touch the hearts of our people. In the midst of our
affliction we reverently thank the Almighty that we are
at peace with the nations of mankind; and we firmly intend
that our policy shall be such as to continue unbroken
these international relations of mutual respect and good
will.
| Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 | |