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THEODORE ROOSEVELT AT OSAWATOMIE,
KANSAS - 1910
The New Nationalism
It follows the full text transcript of
Theodore Roosevelt's The New Nationalism speech, delivered at
Osawatomie, Kansas - August 31, 1910.
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We come here today
to commemorate |
one of the
epoch-making events of the long struggle for the
rights of man, the long struggle for the uplift
of humanity. Our country, this great Republic,
means nothing unless it means the triumph of a
real democracy, the triumph of popular
government, and, in the long run, of an economic
system under which each man shall be guaranteed
the opportunity to show the best that there is
in him. That is why the history of America is
now the central feature of the history of the
world; for the world has set its face hopefully
toward our democracy; and, O my fellow citizens,
each one of you carries on your shoulders not
only the burden of doing well for the sake of
your own country, but the burden of doing well
and of seeing that this nation does well for the
sake of mankind.
There have been
two great crises in our country's history:
first, when it was formed, and then, again, when
it was perpetuated; and, in the second of these
great crises - in the time of stress and strain
which culminated in the Civil War, on the
outcome of which depended the justification of
what had been done earlier, you men of the Grand
Army, you men who fought through the Civil War,
not only did you justify your generation, not
only did you render life worth living for our
generation, but you justified the wisdom of
Washington and Washington's colleagues. If this
Republic had been founded by them only to be
split asunder into fragments when the strain
came, then the judgment of the world would have
been that Washington's work was not worth doing.
It was you who crowned Washington's work, as you
carried to achievement the high purpose of
Abraham Lincoln.
Now, with this
second period of our history the name of John
Brown will be forever associated; and Kansas was
the theater upon which the first act of the
second of our great national life dramas was
played. It was the result of the struggle in
Kansas which determined that our country should
be in deed as well as in name devoted to both
union and freedom; that the great experiment of
democratic government on a national scale should
succeed and not fail. In name we had the
Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave
the lie by our acts to the words of the
Declaration of Independence until 1865; and
words count for nothing except in so far as they
represent acts. This is true everywhere; but, O
my friends, it should be truest of all in
political life. A broken promise is bad enough
in private life. It is worse in the field of
politics. No man is worth his salt in public
life who makes on the stump a pledge which he
does not keep after election; and, if he makes
such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out
of public life. I care for the great deeds of
the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward in
the present. I speak of the men of the past
partly that they may be honored by our praise of
them, but more that they may serve as examples
for the future.
It was a heroic
struggle; and, as is inevitable with all such
struggles, it had also a dark and terrible side.
Very much was done of good, and much also of
evil; and, as was inevitable in such a period of
revolution, often the same man did both good and
evil. For our great good fortune as a nation,
we, the people of the United States as a whole,
can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least,
to remember it without bitterness, and to fix
our eyes with pride only on the good that was
accomplished. Even in ordinary times there are
very few of us who do not see the problems of
life as through a glass, darkly; and when the
glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular
passion, the vision of the best and the bravest
is dimmed.
Looking back, we
are all of us now able to do justice to the
valor and the disinterestedness and the love of
the right, as to each it was given to see the
right, shown both by the men of the North and
the men of the South in that contest which was
finally decided by the attitude of the West. We
can admire the heroic valor, the sincerity, the
self devotion shown alike by the men who wore
the blue and the men who wore the gray; and our
sadness that such men should have had to fight
one another is tempered by the glad knowledge
that ever hereafter their descendants shall be
found fighting side by side, struggling in peace
as well as in war for the uplift of their common
country. all alike resolute to raise to the
highest pitch of honor and usefulness the nation
to which they all belong. As for the veterans of
the Grand Army of the Republic, they deserve
honor and recognition such as is paid to no
other citizens of the Republic; for to them the
republic owes its all; for to them it owes its
very existence. It is because of what you and
your comrades did in the dark years that we of
to-day walk, each of us, head erect, and proud
that we belong, not to one of a dozen little
squabbling contemptible commonwealths, but to
the mightiest nation upon which the sun shines.
I do not speak of
this struggle of the past merely from the
historic standpoint. Our interest is primarily
in the application to-day of the lessons taught
by the contest of half a century ago. It is of
little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the
mighty men of the past unless we sincerely
endeavor to apply to the problems of the present
precisely the qualities which in other crises
enable the men of that day to meet those crises.
It is half melancholy and half amusing to see
the way in which well-meaning people gather to
do honor to the man who, in company with John
Brown, and under the lead of Abraham Lincoln,
faced and solved the great problems of the
nineteenth century, while, at the same time,
these same good people nervously shrink from, or
frantically denounce, those who are trying to
meet the problems of the twentieth century in
the spirit which was accountable for the
successful solution of the problems of Lincoln's
time.
Of that generation
of men to whom we owe so much, the man to whom
we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our
debt to him is because he forecast our present
struggle and saw the way out. He said:
"I hold that
while man exists it is his duty to improve
not only his own condition, but to assist in
ameliorating mankind."
And again:
"Labor is
prior to, and independent of, capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and
could never have existed if labor had not
first existed. Labor is the superior of
capital, and deserves much the higher
consideration."
If that remark was original with me, I should be
even more strongly denounced as a Communist
agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is
Lincoln's. I am only quoting it; and that is one
side; that is the side the capitalist should
hear. Now, let the working man hear his side.
"Capital has
its rights, which are as worthy of
protection as any other rights.... Nor
should this lead to a war upon the owners of
property. Property is the fruit of labor; .
. . property is desirable; is a positive
good in the world."
And then comes a thoroughly Lincoln-like
sentence:
"Let not him
who is houseless pull down the house of
another, but let him work diligently and
build one for himself, thus by example
assuring that his own shall be safe from
violence when built."
It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln
took substantially the attitude that we ought to
take; he showed the proper sense of proportion
in his relative estimates of capital and labor,
of human rights and property rights. Above all,
in this speech, as in many others, he taught a
lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an
indispensable lesson to us of today. But this
wise kindliness and charity never weakened his
arm or numbed his heart. We cannot afford weakly
to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which
faces us to-day. The issue is joined, and we
must fight or fail.
In every wise
struggle for human betterment one of the main
objects, and often the only object, has been to
achieve in large measure equality of
opportunity. In the struggle for this great end,
nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and
through it people press forward from one stage
of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief
factors in progress is the destruction of
special privilege. The essence of any struggle
for healthy liberty has always been, and must
always be, to take from some one man or class of
men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or
position, or immunity, which has not been earned
by service to his or their fellows. That is what
you fought for in the Civil War, and that is
what we strive for now.
At many stages in the advance of humanity, this
conflict between the men who possess more than
they have earned and the men who have earned
more than they possess is the central condition
of progress. In our day it appears as the
struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right
of self-government as against the special
interests, who twist the methods of free
government into machinery for defeating the
popular will. At every stage, and under all
circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to
equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and
give to the life and citizenship of every
individual the highest possible value both to
himself and to the commonwealth. That is nothing
new. All I ask in civil life is what you fought
for in the Civil War. I ask that civil life be
carried on according to the spirit in which the
army was carried on. You never get perfect
justice, but the effort in handling the army was
to bring to the front the men who could do the
job. Nobody grudged promotion to Grant, or
Sherman, or Thomas, or Sheridan, because they
earned it. The only complaint was when a man got
promotion which he did not earn.
Practical equality
of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve
it, will have two great results. First, every
man will have a fair chance to make of himself
all that in him lies; to reach the highest point
to which his capacities, unassisted by special
privilege of his own and unhampered by the
special privilege of others, can carry him, and
to get for himself and his family substantially
what he has earned. Second, equality of
opportunity means that the commonwealth will get
from every citizen the highest service of which
he is capable. No man who carries the burden of
the special privileges of another can give to
the commonwealth that service to which it is
fairly entitled.
I stand for the
square deal. But when I say that I am for the
square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for
fair play under the present rules of the games,
but that I stand for having those rules changed
so as to work for a more substantial equality of
opportunity and of reward for equally good
service. One word of warning, which, I think, is
hardly necessary in Kansas. When I say I want a
square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that
I want a square deal for the man who remains
poor because he has not got the energy to work
for himself. If a man who has had a chance will
not make good, then he has got to quit. And you
men of the Grand Army, you want justice for the
brave man who fought, and punishment for the
coward who shirked his work. Is not that so?
Now, this means
that our government, national and State, must be
freed from the sinister influence or control of
special interests. Exactly as the special
interests of cotton and slavery threatened our
political integrity before the Civil War, so now
the great special business interests too often
control and corrupt the men and methods of
government for their own profit. We must drive
the special interests out of politics. That is
one of our tasks to-day. Every special interest
is entitled to justice - full, fair, and
complete - and, now, mind you, if there were any
attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm
to the special interest, whatever it may be, and
I most dislike and the wealthy man, whomsoever
he may be, for whom I have the greatest
contempt, I would fight for him, and you would
if you were worth your salt. He should have
justice. For every special interest is entitled
to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in
Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to
representation in any public office. The
Constitution guarantees protections to property,
and we must make that promise good But it does
not give the right of suffrage to any
corporation. The true friend of property, the
true conservative, is he who insists that
property shall be the servant and not the master
of the commonwealth; who insists that the
creature of man's making shall be the servant
and not the master of the man who made it. The
citizens of the United States must effectively
control the mighty commercial forces which they
have themselves called into being.
There can be no
effective control of corporations while their
political activity remains. To put an end to it
will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it
can be done.
We must have
complete and effective publicity of corporate
affairs, so that people may know beyond
peradventure whether the corporations obey the
law and whether their management entitles them
to the confidence of the public. It is necessary
that laws should be passed to prohibit the use
of corporate funds directly or indirectly for
political purposes; it is still more necessary
that such laws should be thoroughly enforced.
Corporate expenditures for political purposes,
and especially such expenditures by
public-service corporations, have supplied one
of the principal sources of corruption in our
political affairs.
It has become
entirely clear that we must have government
supervision of the capitalization, not only of
public-service corporations, including,
particularly, railways, but of all corporations
doing an interstate business. I do not wish to
see the nation forced into the ownership of the
railways if it can possibly be avoided, and the
only alternative is thoroughgoing and effective
regulation, which shall be based on a full
knowledge of all the facts, including a physical
valuation of property. This physical valuation
is not needed, or, at least, is very rarely
needed, for fixing rates; but it is needed as
the basis of honest capitalization.
We have come to
recognize that franchises should never be
granted except for a limited time, and never
without proper provision for compensation to the
public. It is my personal belief that the same
kind and degree of control and supervision which
should be exercised over public-service
corporations should be extended also to
combinations which control necessaries of life,
such as meat, oil, and coal, or which deal in
them on an important scale. I have not doubt
that the ordinary man who has control of them is
much like ourselves. I have no doubt he would
like to do well, but I want to have enough
supervision to help him realize that desire to
do well.
I believe that the
officers, and, especially, the directors, of
corporations should be held personally
responsible when any corporation breaks the law.
Combinations in
industry are the result of an imperative
economic law which cannot be repealed by
political legislation. The effort at prohibiting
all combination has substantially failed. The
way out lies, not in attempting to prevent such
combinations, but in completely controlling them
in the interest of the public welfare. For that
purpose the Federal Bureau of Corporations is an
agency of first importance. Its powers, and,
therefore, its efficiency, as well as that of
the Interstate Commerce Commission, should be
largely increased. We have a right to expect
from the Bureau of Corporations and from the
Interstate Commerce Commission a very high grade
of public service. We should be as sure of the
proper conduct of the interstate railways and
the proper management of interstate business as
we are now sure of the conduct and management of
the national banks, and we should have as
effective supervision in one case as in the
other. The Hepburn Act, and the amendment to the
act in the shape in which it finally passed
Congress at the last session, represent a long
step in advance, and we must go yet further.
There is a
wide-spread belief among our people that under
the methods of making tariffs, which have
hitherto obtained, the special interests are too
influential. Probably this is true of both the
big special interests and the little special
interests. These methods have put a premium on
selfishness, and, naturally, the selfish big
interests have gotten more than their smaller,
though equally selfish brothers. The duty of
Congress is to provide a method by which the
interest of the whole people shall be all that
receives consideration. To this end there must
be an expert tariff commission, wholly removed
from the possibility of political pressure or of
improper business influence. Such a commission
can find the real difference between cost of
production, which is mainly the difference of
labor cost here and abroad. As fast as its
recommendations are made, I believe in revising
one schedule at a time. A general revision of
the tariff almost inevitably leads to logrolling
and the subordination of the general public
interest to local and special interests.
The absence of
effective State, and, especially, national,
restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended
to create a small class of enormously wealthy
and economically powerful men, whose chief
object is to hold and increase their power. The
prime need is to change the conditions which
enable these men to accumulate power which is
not for the general welfare that they should
hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune
which represents his own power and sagacity,
when exercised with entire regard to the welfare
of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take
the lesson from your own experience. Not only
did you not grudge, but you gloried in the
promotion of the great generals who gained their
promotion by leading the army to victory. So it
is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil
life if it is honorably obtained and well used.
It is not even enough that it should have gained
without doing damage to the community. We should
permit it to be gained only so long as the
gaining represents benefit to the community.
This, I know, implies a policy of a far more
active governmental interference with social and
economic conditions in this country than we have
yet had, but I think we have got to face the
fact that such an increase in governmental
control is now necessary.
No man should
receive a dollar unless that dollar has been
fairly earned. Every dollar received should
represent a dollar's worth of service rendered -
not gambling in stocks, but service rendered.
The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by
the mere fact of its size acquires qualities
which differentiate it in kind as well as in
degree from what is possessed by men of
relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in
a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in
another tax which is far more easily collected
and far more effective - a graduated inheritance
tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded
against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount
with the size of the estate.
The people of the
United States suffer from periodical financial
panics to a degree substantially unknown among
the other nations which approach us in financial
strength. There is no reason why we should
suffer what they escape. It is of profound
importance that our financial system should be
promptly investigated, and so thoroughly and
effectively revised as to make it certain that
hereafter our currency will no longer fail at
critical times to meet our needs.
It is hardly
necessary for me to repeat that I believe in an
efficient army and a navy large enough to secure
for us abroad that respect which is the surest
guaranty of peace. A word of special warning to
my fellow citizens who are as progressive as I
hope I am. I want them to keep up their interest
in our internal affairs; and I want them also
continually to remember Uncle Sam's interest
abroad. Justice and fair dealing among nations
rest upon principles identical with those which
control justice and fair dealing among the
individuals of which nations are composed, with
the vital exception that each nation must do its
own part in international police work. If you
get into trouble here, you can call for the
police; but if Uncle Sam gets into trouble, he
has got to be his own policeman, and I want to
see him strong enough to encourage the peaceful
aspirations of other peoples in connection with
us. I believe in national friendships and
heartiest good-will to all nations; but national
friendships, like those between men, must be
founded on respect as well as on liking, on
forbearance as well as upon trust. I should be
heartily ashamed of any American who did not try
to make the American Government act as Justly
toward the other nations in international
relations as he himself would act toward any
individual in private relations. I should be
heartily ashamed to see us wrong a weaker power,
and I should hang my head forever if we tamely
suffered wrong from a stronger power.
Of conservation I
shall speak more at length elsewhere.
Conservation means development as much as it
does protection. I recognize the right and duty
of this generation to develop and use the
natural resources of our land; but I do not
recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by
wasteful use, the generations that come after
us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it
so behave as each farmer here behaves with
reference to his own children. That farmer is a
poor creature who skins the land and leaves it
worthless to his children. The farmer is a good
farmer who, having enabled the land to support
himself and to provide for the education of his
children leaves it to them a little better than
he found it himself. I believe the same thing of
a nation.
Moreover, I
believe that the natural resources must be used
for the benefit of all our people, and not
monopolized for the benefit of the few, and here
again is another case in which I am accused of
taking a revolutionary attitude. People forget
now that one hundred years ago there were public
men of good character who advocated the nation
selling its public lands in great quantities, so
that the nation could get the most money out of
it, and giving it to the men who could cultivate
it for their own uses. We took the proper
democratic ground that the land should be
granted in small sections to the men who were
actually to till it and live on it. Now, with
the water-power with the forests, with the
mines, we are brought face to face with the fact
that there are many people who will go with us
in conserving the resources only if they are to
be allowed to exploit them for their benefit.
That is one of the fundamental reasons why the
special interest should be driven out of
politics. Of all the questions which can come
before this nation, short of the actual
preservation of its existence in a great war,
there is none which compares in importance with
the great central task of leaving this land even
a better land for our descendants than it is for
us, and training them into a better race to
inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is
a great moral issue for it involves the
patriotic duty of insuring the safety and
continuance of the nation. Let me add that the
health and vitality of our people are at least
as well worth conserving as their forests,
waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great
work the national government must bear a most
important part.
I have spoken
elsewhere also of the great task which lies
before the farmers of the country to get for
themselves and their wives and children not only
the benefits of better farming, but also those
of better business methods and better conditions
of life on the farm. The burden of this great
task will fall, as it should, mainly upon the
great organizations of the farmers themselves. I
am glad it will, for I believe they are all able
to handle it. In particular, there are strong
reasons why the Departments of Agriculture of
the various States, and the United States
Department of Agriculture, and the agricultural
colleges and experiment stations should extend
their work to cover all phases of farm life,
instead of limiting themselves. as they have far
too often limited themselves in the past, solely
to the question of the production of crops. And
now a special word to the farmer. I want to see
him make the farm as fine a farm as it can be
made; and let him remember to see that the
improvement goes on indoors as well as out; let
him remember that the farmer's wife should have
her share of thought and attention just as much
as the farmer himself. Nothing is more true than
that excess of every kind is followed by
reaction; a fact which should be pondered by
reformer and reactionary alike. We are face to
face with new conceptions of the relations of
property to human welfare, chiefly because
certain advocates of the rights of property as
against the rights of men have been pushing
their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds
that every human right is secondary to his
profit must now give way to the advocate of
human welfare, who rightly maintains that every
man holds his property subject to the general
right of the community to regulate its use to
whatever degree the public welfare may require
it.
But I think we may
go still further. The right to regulate the use
of wealth in the public interest is universally
admitted. Let us admit also the right to
regulate the terms and conditions of labor,
which is the chief element of wealth, directly
in the interest of the common good. The
fundamental thing to do for every man is to give
him a chance to reach a place in which he will
make the greatest possible contribution to the
public welfare. Understand what I say there.
Give him a chance, not push him up if he will
not be pushed. Help any man who stumbles; if he
lies down, it is a poor job to try to carry him;
but if he is a worthy man, try your best to see
that he gets a chance to show the worth that is
in him. No man can be a good citizen unless he
has a wage more than sufficient to cover the
bare cost of living, and hours of labor short
enough so that after his day's work is done he
will have time and energy to bear his share in
the management of the community, to help in
carrying the general load. We keep countless men
from being good citizens by the conditions of
life with which we surround them. We need
comprehensive workmen's compensation acts, both
State and national laws to regulate child labor
and work for women, and, especially, we need in
our common schools not merely education in book
learning, but also practical training for daily
life and work. We need to enforce better
sanitary conditions for our workers and to
extend the use of safety appliances for our
workers in industry and commerce, both within
and between the States. Also, friends, in the
interest of the working man himself we need to
set our faces like Mint against mob-violence
just as against corporate greed; against
violence and injustice and lawlessness by
wage-workers just as much as against lawless
cunning and greed and selfish arrogance of
employers. If I could ask but one thing of my
fellow countrymen, my request would be that,
whenever they go in for reform, they remember
the two sides, and that they always exact
justice from one side as much as from the other.
I have small use for the public servant who can
always see and denounce the corruption of the
capitalist, but who cannot persuade himself,
especially before elections, to say a word about
lawless mob-violence. And I have equally small
use for the man, be he a judge on the bench, or
editor of a great paper, or wealthy and
influential private citizen, who can see clearly
enough and denounce the lawlessness of
mob-violence, but whose eyes are closed so that
he is blind when the question is one of
corruption in business on a gigantic scale. Also
remember what I said about excess in reformer
and reactionary alike. If the reactionary man,
who thinks of nothing but the rights of
property, could have his way, he would bring
about a revolution; and one of my chief fears in
connection with progress comes because I do not
want to see our people, for lack of proper
leadership, compelled to follow men whose
intentions are excellent, but whose eyes are a
little too wild to make it really safe to trust
them. Here in Kansas there is one paper which
habitually denounces me as the tool of Wall
Street, and at the same time frantically
repudiates the statement that I am a Socialist
on the ground that is an unwarranted slander of
the Socialists.
National
efficiency has many factors. It is a necessary
result of the principle of conservation widely
applied. In the end it will determine our
failure or success as a nation. National
efficiency has to do, not only with natural
resources and with men, but is equally concerned
with institutions. The State must be made
efficient for the work which concerns only the
people of the State; and the nation for that
which concerns all the people. There must remain
no neutral ground to serve as a refuge for
lawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers of
great wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal
cunning which will teach them how to avoid both
jurisdictions. It is a misfortune when the
national legislature fails to do its duty in
providing a national remedy, so that the only
national activity is the purely negative
activity of the judiciary in forbidding the
State to exercise power in the premises.
I do not ask for
over-centralization; but I do ask that we work
in a spirit of broad and far-reaching
nationalism when we work for what concerns our
people as a whole. We are all Americans. Our
common interests are as broad as the continent.
I speak to you here in Kansas exactly as I would
speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital
problems are those which affect us all alike.
The national government belongs to the whole
American people, and where the whole American
people are interested, that interest can be
guarded effectively only by the national
government. The betterment which we seek must be
accomplished, I believe, mainly through the
national government.
The American
people are right in demanding that New
Nationalism, without which we cannot hope to
deal with new problems. The New Nationalism puts
the national need before sectional or personal
advantage. It is impatient of the utter
confusion that results from local legislatures
attempting to treat national issues as local
issues. It is still more impatient of the
impotence which springs from over-division of
governmental powers, the impotence which makes
it possible for local selfishness or for legal
cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to
bring national activities to a deadlock. This
New Nationalism regards the executive power as
the steward of the public welfare. It demands of
the judiciary that it shall be interested
primarily in human welfare rather than in
property, just as it demands that the
representative body shall represent all the
people rather than any one class or section of
the people.
I believe in
shaping the ends of government to protect
property as well as human welfare. Normally, and
in the long run, the ends are the same; but
whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for
men and not for property, as you were in the
Civil War. I am far from underestimating the
importance of dividends; but I rank dividends
below human character. Again, I do not have any
sympathy with the reformer who says he does not
care for dividends. Of course, economic welfare
is necessary, for a man must pull his own weight
and be able to support his family. I know well
that the reformers must not bring upon the
people economic ruin, or the reforms themselves
will go down in the ruin. But we must be ready
to face temporary disaster, whether or not
brought on by those who will war against us to
the knife.
Those who oppose
all reform will do well to remember that ruin in
its worst form is inevitable if our national
life brings us nothing better than swollen
fortunes for the few and the triumph in both
politics and business of a sordid and selfish
materialism.
If our political
institutions were perfect, they would absolutely
prevent the political domination of money in any
part of our affairs. We need to make our
political representatives more quickly and
sensitively responsive to the people whose
servants they are. More direct action by the
people in their own affairs under proper
safeguards is vitally necessary. The direct
primary is a step in this direction, if it is
associated with a corrupt-practices act
effective to prevent the advantage of the man
willing recklessly and unscrupulously to spend
money over his more honest competitor. It is
particularly important that all moneys received
or expended for campaign purposes should be
publicly accounted for, not only after election,
but before election as well. Political action
must be made simpler, easier, and freer from
confusion for every citizen. I believe that the
prompt removal of unfaithful or incompetent
public servants should be made easy and sure in
whatever way experience shall show to be most
expedient in any given class of cases.
One of the
fundamental necessities in a representative
government such as ours is to make certain that
the men to whom the people delegate their power
shall serve the people by whom they are elected,
and not the special interests. I believe that
every national officer, elected or appointed,
should be forbidden to perform any service or
receive any compensation, directly or
indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a
similar provision could not fail to be useful
within the States.
The object of government is the welfare of the
people. The material progress and prosperity of
a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they
lead to the moral and material welfare of all
good citizens. Just in proportion as the average
man and woman are honest, capable of sound
judgment and high ideals, active in public
affairs - but, first of all, sound in their home
life, and the father and mother of healthy
children whom they bring up well - just so far,
and no farther, we may count our civilization a
success. We must have - I believe we have
already - a genuine and permanent moral
awakening, without which no wisdom of
legislation or administration really means
anything; and, on the other hand, we must try to
secure the social and economic legislation
without which any improvement due to purely
moral agitation is necessarily evanescent. Let
me again illustrate by a reference to the Grand
Army. You could not have won simply as a
disorderly and disorganized mob. You needed
generals; you needed careful administration of
the most advanced type; and a good commissary -
the cracker line. You well remember that success
was necessary in many different lines in order
to bring about general success.
You had to have
the administration at Washington good, just as
you had to have the administration in the field;
and you had to have the work of the generals
good. You could not have triumphed without that
administration and leadership; but it would all
have been worthless if the average soldier had
not had the right stuff in him. He had to have
the right stuff in him, or you could not get it
out of him. In the last analysis, therefore,
vitally necessary though it was to have the
right kind of organization and the right kind of
generalship, it was even more vitally necessary
that the average soldier should have the
fighting edge, the right character.
So it is in our
civil life. No matter how honest and decent we
are in our private lives, if we do not have the
right kind of law and the right kind of
administration of the law, we cannot go forward
as a nation. That is imperative; but it must be
an addition to, and not a substitution for, the
qualities that make us good citizens. In the
last analysis, the most important elements in
any man's career must be the sum of those
qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of
as character. If he has not got it, then no law
that the wit of man can devise, no
administration of the law by the boldest and
strongest executive, will avail to help him. We
must have the right kind of character -
character that makes a man, first of all, a good
man in the home, a good father, a good husband -
that makes a man a good neighbor. You must have
that, and, then, in addition, you must have the
kind of law and the kind of administration of
the law which will give to those qualities in
the private citizen the best possible chance for
development. The prime problem of our nation is
to get the right type of good citizenship, and,
to get it, we must have progress, and our public
men must be genuinely progressive.
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