ROOSEVELT, THEODORE

In the following address by Mr. Roose- the irresolute, and the idle, and it is no less true that there is scant room in the world at large for the nation with mighty thews that dares not to be great.

velt, delivered Sept. 2, 1901, at the Minnesota State fair at Minneapolis, the high ethical spirit of the speaker and his frank treatment of the political problems of the day make this speech a fit pendant to that by President McKinley at the PanAmerican Exposition on Sept. 5:

Surely in speaking to the sons of men who actually did the rough and hard and infinitely glorious work of making the great Northwest what it now is, I need hardly insist upon the rightThe Law of High, Resolute Endeavor. eousness of this doctrine. In your own -In his admirable series of studies of vigorous lives you show by every act how twentieth-century problems Dr. Lyman scant is your patience with those who Abbott has pointed out that we are a na- do not see in the life of effort the life tion of pioneers; that the first colonists supremely worth living. Sometimes we to our shores were pioneers, and that bear those who do not work spoken of pioneers selected out from among the with envy. Surely the wilfully idle need descendants of these early pioneers, min- arouse in the breast of a healthy man no gled with others selected afresh from the emotion stronger than that of contempt-Old World, pushed westward into the wil- at the outside, no emotion stronger than derness, and laid the foundations for new angry contempt. commonwealths. They were men of hope and expectation, of enterprise and energy; for the men of dull content or more dull despair had no part in the great movement into and across the New World. Our country has been populated by pioneers, and therefore it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more expansive power than any other in the wide world.

The feeling of envy would have in it an admission of inferiority on our part, to which the men who know not the sterner joys of life are not entitled. Poverty is a bitter thing, but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral, and intellectual flabbiness to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all vain You whom I am now addressing stand, pursuits, the pursuit of mere pleasure as a for the most part, but one generation re- sufficient end in itself. The wilfully idle moved from these pioneers. You are man, like the wilfully barren woman, has typical Americans, for you have done the no place in a sane, healthy, and vigorous great, the characteristic, the typical work community. Moreover, the gross and of our American life. In making homes hideous selfishness for which each stands and carving out careers for yourselves and defeats even its own miserable aims. Exyour children, you have built up this actly as infinitely the happiest woman is State; throughout our history the success she who has borne and brought up many of the home-maker has been but another healthy children-so infinitely the hapname for the upbuilding of the nation. piest man is he who has toiled hard and The men who with axe in the forest, and successfully in his life work. The work pick in the mountains and plough on may be done in a thousand different ways; the prairies, pushed to completion the with the brain or the hands, in the study, dominion of our people over the American the field, or the workshop; if it is honest wilderness have given the definite shape work, honestly done and well worth doing, to our nation. They have shown the that is all we have a right to ask. Every qualities of daring, endurance, and far- father and mother here, if they are wise, sightedness, of eager desire for victory will bring up their children not to shirk and stubborn refusal to accept defeat, difficulties, but to meet them and overwhich go to make up the essential manli- come them; not to strive after a life of ness of the American character. Above all they have recognized in practical form the fundamental law of success in American life-the law of worthy work, the law of high, resolute endeavor. We have but little room among our people for the timid,

ignoble ease, but to strive to do their duty, first to themselves and their families and then to the whole State; and this duty must inevitably take the shape of work in some form or other. You, the sons of pioneers, if you are true to your ancestry,

must make your lives as worthy as they of wage-workers, and which shall discrimi

made theirs. They sought for true success, and therefore they did not seek ease. They knew that success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor.

nate in favor of the honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantages under which he stands when compared with unscrupulous competitors who have no conscience, and will do right only under fear of punishment.

It seems to me that the simple accept ance of this fundamental fact of American life, this acknowledgment that the law of work is the fundamental law of our being, will help us to start aright in facing not a few of the problems that confront us from without and from within. As regards internal affairs, it should teach us the prime need of remembering that after all has been said and done, the chief factor in any man's success or failure must be his own character; that is, the sum of It is probably true that the large mahis common-sense, his courage, his virile jority of the fortunes that now exist in energy and capacity. Nothing can take this country have been amassed not by the place of this individual factor. injuring our people, but as an incident

Nor can legislation stop only with what are termed labor questions. The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of capital, which have marked the development of our industrial system, create new conditions, and necessitate a change from the old attitude of the State and the nation towards property.

I do not for a moment mean that much to the conferring of great benefits upon cannot be done to supplement it. Besides the community; and this, no matter each of us working individually, all of us what may have been the conscious purhave got to work together. We cannot pose of those amassing them. There is possibly do our best work as a nation but the scantiest justification for most unless all of us know how to act in com- of the outery against the men of wealth bination as well as how to act each in- as such, and it ought to be unneces dividually for himself. The acting in com- sary to state that any appeal which dibination can take many forms, but, of rectly or indirectly leads to suspicion and course, its most effective form must be hatred among ourselves, which tends to when it comes in the shape of law; that limit opportunity, and therefore to shut is, of action by the community as a whole the door of success against poor men of through the law-making body. talent, and, finally, which entails the possibility of lawlessness and violence, is an attack upon the fundamental properties of American citizenship. Our interests are at bottom common; in the long run we go up or go down together. Yet more and more it is evident that the State, and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control, as regards the great corporations which are its creatures; particularly as regards the great business combinations, which derive a portion of their importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendency. The right should be exercised with caution and self-restraint; but it should exist, so that it may be invoked if the need arises.

But it is not possible ever to insure prosperity merely by law. Something for good can be done by law, and a bad law can do an infinity of mischief; but, after all, the best law can only prevent wrong and injustice, and give to the thrifty, the far-seeing, and the hard-working a chance to exercise to the best advantage their special and peculiar abilities. No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, between interest and interest. All that can be said is that it is highly undesirable, on the one hand, to weaken individual initiative, and on the other hand, that in a constantly increasing number of cases we shall find it necessary in the future to shackle cunning as in the past we have shackled force.

It is not only highly desirable, but necessary, that there should be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests

So much for our duties, each to himself and each to his neighbor, within the limits of our own country. But our country, as it strides forward with ever-increasing rapidity to a foremost place among the world powers, must necessarily find, more and more, that it has world duties also.

die; and whereas the nation that has done nothing leaves nothing behind it, the nation that has done a great work really continues, though in changed form, forevermore.

The Roman has passed away, exactly as all nations of antiquity which did not expand when he expanded have passed away; but their very memory has vanished, while he himself is still a living force throughout the wide world in our entire civilization of to-day, and will so continue through countless generations, through untold ages.

The weak and the stationary have vanished as surely as, and more rapidly than, those whose citizens felt within them the It is because we believe with all our life that impels generous souls to great heart and soul in the greatness of this and noble effort. This is another way of country, because we feel the thrill of stating the universal law of death, which hardy life in our veins, and are conis itself part of the universal law of life. fident that to us is given the privilege The man who works, the man who does of playing a leading part in the cengreat deeds, in the end dies as surely as tury that has just opened that we hail the veriest idler who cumbers the earth's with eager delight the opportunity to surface; but he leaves behind him the do whatever task Providence may allot great fact that he has done his work well. So it is with nations. While the nation that has dared to be great, that has had the will and the power to change the destiny of the ages, in the end must die, yet no less surely the nation that has played the part of the weakling must also VII.-2 G

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us. We admit with all sincerity that our first duty is within our own household: that we must not merely talk, but act, in favor of cleanliness and decency and righteousness, in all political, social, and civic matters. No prosperity and no glory can save a nation that is rotten at heart.

We must ever keep the core of our national justice. Then let us make it equally evibeing sound, and see to it that not only dent that we will not tolerate injustice our citizens in private life, but, above all, being done us in return. Let us further our statesmen in public life, practise the make it evident that we use no words old commonplace virtues which from time which we are not prepared to back up immemorial have lain at the root of all with deeds, and that while our speech true national well-being. is always moderate, we are ready and willing to make it good. Such an attitude will be the surest possible guarantee of that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must ever be the prime aim of a self-governing people.

Yet, while this is our first duty, it is not our whole duty. Exactly as each man, while doing first his duty to his wife and the children within his home, must yet, if he hopes to amount to much, strive mightily in the world outside his home; so our nation, while first of all seeing to its own domestic well-being, must not shrink from playing its part among the great nations without.

This is the attitude we should take as regards the Monroe doctrine. There is not the least need of blustering about it. Still less should it be used as a pretext for our own aggrandizement at the exOur duty may take many forms in the pense of any other American state. But, future as it has taken many forms in most emphatically, we must make it evithe past. Nor is it possible to lay down dent that we intend on this point ever a hard and fast rule for all cases. We to maintain the old American position. must ever face the fact of our shifting Indeed, it is hard to understand how any national needs, of the always-changing man can take any other position now opportunities that present themselves. that we are all looking forward to the But we may be certain of one thing; whether we wish it or not, we cannot avoid hereafter having duties to do in the face of other nations. All that we can do is to settle whether we shall perform these duties well or ill.

building of the isthmian canal. The Monroe doctrine is not international law, but there is no necessity that it should be.

All that is needful is that it should continue to be a cardinal feature of American policy on this continent; and the

own interests, champion it as strongly as we do. We do not by this doctrine intend to sanction any policy of aggression by one American commonwealth at the expense of any other, nor any policy of commercial discrimination against any foreign power whatsoever. Commercially. as far as this doctrine is concerned, all we wish is a fair field and no favor; but if we are wise we shall strenuously insist that under no pretext whatsoever shall there be any territorial aggrandizement on American soil by any European power, and this, no matter what form the territorial aggrandizement may take.

Right here let me make as vigorous a Spanish-American states should, in their plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb, "Speak softly and carry a big stick-you will go far." If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting, and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words, his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with We most earnestly hope and believe the nation. It is both foolish and un- that the chance of our having any hosdignified to indulge in undue self-glori- tile military complication with any forfication, and, above all, in loose-tongued eign power is very small. But that denunciation of other peoples. Whenever there will come a strain, a jar here and on any point we come in contact with a there, from commercial and agricultural foreign power, I hope that we shall al- that is, from industrial-competition, ways strive to speak courteously and re- is almost inevitable. Here again we spectfully of that foreign power. Let us have got to remember that Our first make it evident that we intend to do duty is to our own people; and yet that

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ROOSEVELT, THEODORE

own efforts a sane and orderly civilization, no matter how small it may be, has anything to fear from us.

we can best get justice by doing justice.
We must continue the policy that has been
so brilliantly successful in the past, and
so shape our economic system as to give Our dealings with Cuba illustrate this,
every advantage to the skill, energy, and and should be forever a subject of
intelligence of our farmers, merchants, just national pride. We speak in no
manufacturers, and wage workers; and spirit of arrogance when we state as
yet we must also remember in dealing a simple historic fact that never in
with other nations that benefits must be recent times has any great nation acted
given where benefits are sought. It is not with such disinterestedness as we have
possible to dogmatize as to the exact way shown in Cuba. We freed the island from
of attaining this end; for the exact con- the Spanish yoke. We then earnestly did
ditions cannot be foretold. In the long run our best to help the Cubans in the estab-
one of our prime needs is stability and lishment of free education, of law and
continuity of economic policy; and yet, order, of material prosperity, of the clean-
through treaty or by direct legislation, liness necessary to sanitary well-being in
it may, at least in certain cases, become their great cities. We did all this at

advantageous to supplement our present
policy by a system of reciprocal benefit
and obligation.
Throughout a large part of our nation-
al career our history has been one of
expansion, the expansion being of different
kinds at different times. This explanation
is not a matter of regret, but of price.
It is vain to tell a people as masterful as
ours that the spirit of enterprise is not
safe. The true American has never feared
to run risks when the prize to be won was
of sufficient value. No nation capable of
self-government and of developing by its

ex

great expense of treasure, at some pense of life, and now we are establishing them in a free and independent commonwealth, and have asked in return nothing whatever save that at no time shall their independence be prostituted to the advantage of some foreign rival of ours, or so as to menace our well-being. To have failed to ask this would have amounted to national stultification on our part.

In the Philippines we have brought peace, and we are at this moment giving them such freedom and self-government as they could never under any conceivable