CHAPTER VII.

Important State Papers and Speeches of President McKinley-Message to Congress on the War in Cuba -Addresses at Peace Jubilees.

AMOURNFUL interest now attaches to President McKinley's

last public address. It was delivered on Thursday, September 5th, to a great throng at Buffalo. From his entry to the Exposition grounds soon after ten o'clock in the morning until the dying out of the lights of the illumination of the grounds and buildings at night, the day at the Pan-American Exposition was a long ovation to President McKinley.

As the President, accompanied by Mrs. McKinley, Mrs. William Hamlin, of the Board of Women Managers, and John G. Milburn, drove to the Lincoln Parkway entrance, they were met by detachments of United States marines and the seacoast artillery, and the Sixty-fifth and Seventy-fourth New York regiments under General S. M. Welch. A President's salute of twenty-one guns was fired. The great crowd which covered the esplanade before the grand stand, a quarter of a mile square, overflowed into the Court of Fountains. There were more than 30,000 who joined in the cheers that greeted the President as he assisted Mrs. McKinley from the carriage to the stand, where were seated many distinguished persons, among them the representatives of Mexico and most of the Central and South American republics.

There was almost absolute quiet when Mr. Milburn arose and said simply :-" Ladies and gentlemen-The President."

Cheers again drowned all else. When they had subsided the President began his address.

After welcoming the representatives of other nations, praising expositions in general as the "timekeepers of progress," and noting the benefits to be derived from comparison of products and friendly competition, the President referred to the march of improvement and invention with reference to its effect upon the

world's commerce and moral and material advancement. He referred also to the growing disposition to settle international differences in the court of arbitration, the "noblest forum" for the settlement of such disputes. He then said :—

"My fellow citizens, trade statistics indicate that this country is in a state of unexampled prosperity. The figures are almost appalling. They show that we are utilizing our fields and forests and mines, and that we are furnishing profitable employment to the millions of workingmen throughout the United States bringing comfort and happiness to their homes, and making it possibl to lay by savings for old age and disability.

PROSPERITY EVERYWHERE.

"That all the people are participating in this great prosperity is seen in every American community, and shown by the enor mous and unprecedented deposits in our savings banks. Our duty in the care and security of these deposits and their safe investment demands the highest integrity and the best business. capacity.

"Our indu.rial enterpises, which have grown to such great proportions, affect the homes and occupations of the people and the welfare of the country. Our capacity to produce has developed so enormously and our products have so multiplied that the problem of more markets requires our urgent and immediate attention.

"We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. Reciprocity is the natural outgrowth of our wonderful industrial development under the domestic policy now firmly established.

"What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor.

"The period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of good will and friendly trade rela

tions will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are not. If, perchance, some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad?

"Then, too, we have inadequate steamship service. New lines of steamships have already been put in commission between the Pacific coast ports of the United States and those on the western coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. These should be followed up with direct steamship lines between the western coast of the United States and South American ports.

"We must have more ships. They must be under the American flag, built and manned and owned by Americans. These will not only be profitable in a commercial sense; they will be messengers of peace and amity wherever they go.

LARGER COMMERCE AND TRUER FRATERNITY.

"We must build the isthmian canal, which will unite the two oceans and give a straight line of water communication with the western coasts of Central and South America and Mexico. The construction of a Pacific cable cannot be longer postponed.

"This Exposition would have touched the heart of that American statesman whose mind was ever alert and thought ever constant for a larger commerce and a truer fraternity of the republics of the New World. His broad American spirit is felt and manifested here.

"He needs no identification to an assemblage of Americans anywhere, for the name of Blaine is inseparably associated with the Pan-American movement, which finds here practical and substantial expression, and which we all hope will be firmly advanced by the Pan-American Congress that assembles this autumn in the capital of Mexico.

peace,

'Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of not those of war. "Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe

prosperity, happiness and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth."

President McKinley's reference to the establishment of recip rocal treaties, the necessity of building an isthmian canal and a Pacific cable, and his reference to the work of Mr. Blaine in the carrying out of the Pan-American idea brought forth especially enthusiastic applause. Upon the conclusion of his address the President held an impromptu reception for fifteen minutes.

Mr. McKinley's statesmanlike ability in dealing with great public questions was shown on many occasions. This appeared especially during the events preceding our war with Spain. His message to Congress on April 11, 1898, is a masterpiece of its kind.

MESSAGE ON THE CUBAN QUESTION.

We reproduce the message here, as it contains a concise statement of the matters in controversy, and is an important State paper which every person who would be well informed will desire to preserve.

"TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:

"Obedient to that precept of the Constitution which com. mands the President to give, from time to time, to the Congress information of the state of the Union, and to recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient, it becomes my duty now to address your body with regard to the grave crisis that has arisen in the relations of the United States to Spain by reason of the warfare that for more than three years has raged in the neighboring island of Cuba.

"I do so, because of the intimate connection of the Cuban question with the state our own Union, and the grave relation the course which it is now incumbent upon the nation to adopt, must needs bear to the traditional policy of our Government, if it is to accord with the precepts laid down by the founders of the Republic, and religiously observed by succeeding administrations to the present day.

"The present revolution is but the successor of other similar

Insurrections which have occurred in Cuba against the dominion of Spain, extending over a period of nearly half a century, each of which, during its progress, has subjected the United States to great effort and expense in enforcing its neutrality laws, caused enormous losses to American trade and commerce, caused irritation, annoyance and disturbance among our citizens, and by the exercise of cruel, barbarous and uncivilized practices of warfare, shocked the sensibilities and offended the humane sympathies of our people.

"Since the present revolution began, in February, 1895, this country has seen the fertile domain of our threshold ravaged by fire and sword in the course of a struggle unequalled in the history of the island, and rarely paralleled as to the number of the combatants and the bitterness of the contest by any revolution of modern times, where a determined people striving to be free have been oppressed by the power of the sovereign State.

COMMERCE PARALYZED.

"Our people have beheld a once prosperous community re duced to comparative want, its lucrative commerce virtually paralyzed, its exceptional productiveness diminished, its fields laid waste, its mills in ruins, and its people perishing by tens of thousands from hunger and destitution. We have found ourselves constrained, in the observance of that strict neutrality which our laws enjoin, and which the law of nations commands, to police our waters and watch our own seaports in prevention of any unlawful act in aid of the Cubans.

"Our trade has suffered, the capital invested by our citizens in Cuba has been largely lost, and the temper and forbearance of our people have been so seriously tried as to beget a perilous unrest among our own citizens, which has inevitably found its expression from time to time in the National Legislature, so that issues, wholly external to our own body politic, stand in the way of that close devotion to domestic advancement that becomes a self-contained Commonwealth, whose primal maxim has been the avoidance of all foreign entanglements. All this must needs