Chapter IV: Part 4

And Taft, Judge Taft, Governor Taft, who has been the head of the Philippine Commission, and who has gone back there—Taft, the most brilliant graduate of his year at Yale, the youngest Yale man upon whom Yale ever conferred a degree of LL.D., a man who, having won high position at the bar, and then served as Solicitor-General at Washington, was appointed to the United States bench. He was then asked to sacrifice himself, to give up his position in order to go to the other side of the world to take up an infinitely difficult, an infinitely dangerous problem, and do his best to solve it. He has done his best. He came back here the other day. The man has always had the honorable ambition to get upon the Supreme Court, and he knew that I had always hoped that he would be put on the Supreme Court, and when he was back here a few months ago, and there was a question of a vacancy arising, I said to him: “Governor, I think I ought to tell you that if a vacancy comes in the Supreme Court” (which I knew would put him for life in a position which he would especially like to have), “I do not see how I could possibly give it to you, for I need you where you are.” He said to me: “Mr. President, it has always been my ambition to be on the Supreme Court, but if you should offer me a justiceship now, and at the same time Congress should take away entirely my salary as Governor, I should go straight back to the Philippines, nevertheless, for those people need me, and expect me back, and believe I will not desert them.” He has gone back, gone back as a strong friend among weaker friends to help that people upward along the difficult path of self-government. He has gone to do his part—and a great part—in making the American name a symbol of honor and good faith in the Philippine Islands; to govern with justice, and with that firmness, that absence of weakness, which is only another side of justice. He has gone back to do all of that because it is his duty as he sees it. We are to be congratulated, we Americans, that we have a fellow-American like Taft.

And now Elihu Root, who, unlike myself, Mr. President Eliot, but like most of you present, comes of the old New England stock, whose great-grandfather stood beside Leonard Wood’s great-grandfather among the “embattled farmers” at Concord Bridge; Elihu Root, who had worked his way up from being a poor and unknown country boy in New York, to the leadership of the bar of the great city—he gave it up, made the very great pecuniary sacrifice implied in giving it up, and accepted the position of Secretary of War, a position which, for the last three years and at present amounts to being not only the Secretary of War, but the Secretary for the islands, the Secretary for the colonies at the same time. He has done the most exhausting and the most responsible work of any man in the administration, more exhausting and more responsible work than the work of the President, because circumstances have been such that with a man of Root’s wonderful ability, wonderful industry and wonderful conscientiousness, the President could not help but devolve upon him work that made his task one under which almost any other man would have staggered. He has done all this absolutely, disinterestedly. Nothing can come to Root in the way of reward save the reward that is implied in the knowledge that he has done something of incalculable importance which hardly another man in the Union—no other man that I know of—could have done as well as he has done it. He has before him continually questions of the utmost intricacy to decide, questions upon which life and death hang, questions the decision of which will affect our whole future world policy, questions which affect the welfare of the millions of people with whom we have been brought into such intimate contact by the events of the Spanish War, whose welfare must be a prime consideration from now on with every American public man worthy to serve his country. Root has done this work with the certainty of attack, with the certainty of misunderstanding, with the certainty of being hampered by ignorance (and worse than ignorance). And yet he has created, not for himself but for the nation also, a wonderful triumph from all these adverse forces.

Those three men have rendered inestimable service to the American people. I can do nothing for them. I can show my appreciation of them in no way save the wholly insufficient one of standing up for them, and for their work; and that I will do as long as I have tongue to speak!

AT THE COLISEUM, HARTFORD, CONN., AUGUST 22, 1902

_Mr. Chairman, and you, my Fellow-Americans, men and women of
Hartford_:

I thank you, Senator Platt; through you I thank the State of Connecticut; Mayor Sullivan, through you I thank the city of Hartford for the greeting extended to me.

Before beginning the speech that I had intended, and still intend, to make to you to-night, I wish to allude to an incident that happened this afternoon. In being driven around your beautiful city, I was taken through Pope Park, and stopped at a platform where I was presented with a great horseshoe of flowers, the gift of the workingmen of Hartford to the President of the United States. In Father Sullivan’s speech he laid primary stress upon the fact that it was a gift of welcome from the wage-workers, upon whom ultimately this government depends. And he coupled the words of giving with certain sentences in which he expressed his belief that I would do all that I could to show myself a good representative of the wage-workers. I should be utterly unfit for the position that I occupy if I failed to do all that in me lies to act, as light is given me to act, so as to represent the best thought and purpose of the wage-worker of the United States. At the outset of the twentieth century we are facing difficult and complex problems—problems social and economic—which will tax the best energies of all of us to solve aright, and which we can only solve at all if we approach them in a spirit not merely of common-sense, but of generous desire to act each for all and all for each. While there are occasions when through legislative or administrative action the governmental representatives of the people can do especial service to one set of our citizens, yet I think you will agree with me that in the long run the best way in which to serve any one set of our citizens is to try to serve all alike well, to try to act in a spirit of fairness and justice to all—to give to each man his rights—to safeguard each man in his rights; and so far as in me lies, while I hold my present position I will be true to that conception of my duty.

I want to speak to you to-night, not on our internal problems as a nation, but on some of the external problems which we have had to face during the last four years. The internal problems are the most important. Keeping our own household straight is our first duty; but we have other duties. Just exactly as each man who is worth his salt must first of all be a good husband, a good father, a good bread winner, a good man of business, and yet must in addition to that be a good citizen for the State at large—so a nation must first take care to do well its duties within its own borders, but must not make of that fact an excuse for failing to do those of its duties the performance of which lies without its own borders.

The events of the last few years have forced the American Republic to take a larger position in the world than ever before, and therefore more than ever to concern itself with questions of policy coming without its own borders. As a people we have new duties and new opportunities both in the tropical seas and islands south of us and in the furthest Orient. Much depends upon the way in which we meet those duties, the way in which we take advantage of those opportunities. And remember this, you never can meet any duty, and after you have met it say that your action only affected that duty. If you meet it well you face the next duty a stronger man, and if you meet it ill you face your next duty a weaker man.

From the days of Monroe, Clay and the younger Adams, we as a people have always looked with peculiar interest upon the West Indies and the isthmus connecting North and South America, feeling that whatever happened there was of particular moment to this nation; and there is better reason for that feeling now than ever before. The outcome of the Spanish War put us in possession of Porto Rico, and brought us into peculiarly close touch with Cuba; while the successful negotiation of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, and the legislation following it, at last cleared the way for the construction of the Isthmian Canal. Porto Rico, it is a pleasure to say, may now serve as an example of the best methods of administering our insular possessions. Sometimes we have to learn by experience what to avoid. It is much pleasanter when one can turn to an experience for the purpose of learning what to follow; and the last is true of our experience in Porto Rico. So excellent has been the administration of the island, so excellent the effect of the legislation concerning it, that their very excellence has caused most of us to forget all about it. There is no opportunity for headlines about Porto Rico. You don’t need to use large letters in order to say that Porto Rico continues quiet and prosperous. There is hardly a ripple of failure upon the stream of our success there; and as we don’t have to think of remedies, we follow our usual custom in these matters, and don’t think of it at all.

How have we brought that about? First and foremost, in Porto Rico we have consistently striven to get the very best men to administer the affairs of the island. It is desirable throughout our public service to secure a high standard of efficiency and integrity. But after all, here at home we ourselves always have in our own hands the remedy whereby to supply any deficiency in integrity or capacity among those that govern us. That is a fact that seems to have been forgotten, but it is a fact. In a far-off island things are different. There wrongdoing is more easy and those that suffer from it are more helpless; while there is less efficient check in the way of that public opinion to which public men are sensitive. In consequence, the administration of those islands is beyond all other kinds of administration under our government the one in which the highest standard must be demanded. In making appointments to the insular service, the appointing power must feel all the time that he is acting for the country as a whole, in the interest of the good name of our people as a whole, and any question of mere party expediency must be wholly swept aside, and the matter looked at solely from the standpoint of the honor of our own nation and the welfare of the islands. We have gotten along so well in Porto Rico because we have acted up to that theory in choosing our men down there—governor, treasurer, attorney-general, judges, superintendent of education—every one. You will find among those men all the shades of different political opinion that we have here at home; but you will find them knit together by the purpose of administering the affairs of that island on the highest plane of decency and efficiency.

Besides acting in good faith, we have acted with good sense, and that is also important. We have not been frightened or misled into giving to the people of the island a form of government unsuitable to them. While providing that the people should govern themselves as far as possible, we have not hesitated in their own interests to keep the power of shaping their destiny.

In Cuba the problem was larger, more complicated, more difficult. Here again we kept our promise absolutely. After having delivered the island from its oppressors, we refused to turn it loose offhand, with the certainty that it would sink back into chaos and savagery. For over three years we administered it on a plane higher than it had ever reached before during the four hundred years that had elapsed since the Spaniards first landed upon its shores. We brought moral and physical cleanliness into the government. We cleaned the cities for the first time in their existence. We stamped out yellow fever—an inestimable boon not merely to Cuba, but to the people of the Southern States as well. We established a school system. We made life and property secure, so that industry could again begin to thrive. Then when we had laid deep and broad the foundations upon which civil liberty and national independence must rest, we turned the island over to the hands of those whom its people had chosen as the founders of the new republic. It is a republic with which our own great Republic must ever be closely knit by the ties of common interests and common inspirations. Cuba must always be peculiarly related to us in international politics. She must in international affairs be to a degree a part of our political system. In return she must have peculiar relations with us economically. She must be in a sense part of our economic system. We expect her to accept a political attitude toward us which we think wisest both for her and for us. In return we must be prepared to put her in an economic position as regards our tariff system which will give her some measure of the prosperity which we enjoy. We can not, in my judgment, avoid taking this attitude if we are to persevere in the course which we have outlined for ourselves as a nation during the past four years; and therefore I believe that it is only a matter of time—and I trust only a matter of a very short time—before we enter into reciprocal trade relations with Cuba.

The Isthmian Canal is to be one of the greatest, probably the greatest, engineering feat of the 20th century; and I am glad it is to be done by America. We must take care that it is done under the best conditions and by the best Americans. There are certain preliminary matters to settle. When this has been done, the first question will come upon choosing the commission which is to supervise the building of the canal. And but one thought here is permissible—how to get the very best men of the highest engineering and business and administrative skill, who will consent to undertake the work. If possible, I wish to see those men represent different sections and different political parties. But those questions are secondary. The primary aim must be to get men who, though able to control much greater salaries than the nation is able to pay, nevertheless possess the patriotism and the healthy ambition which will make them put their talents at the government’s service.

So much for what has been done in the Occident. In the Orient the labor was more difficult.

It is rare indeed that a great work, a work supremely worth doing, can be done save at the cost not only of labor and toil, but of much puzzling worry during the time of the performance. Normally, the nation that achieves greatness, like the individual who achieves greatness, can do so only at the cost of anxiety and bewilderment and heart-wearing effort. Timid people, people scant of faith and hope, and good people who are not accustomed to the roughness of the life of effort—are almost sure to be disheartened and dismayed by the work and the worry, and overmuch cast down by the shortcomings, actual or seeming, which in real life always accompany the first stages even of what eventually turn out to be the most brilliant victories.

All this is true of what has happened during the last four years in the Philippine Islands. The Spanish War itself was an easy task, but it left us certain other tasks which were much more difficult. One of these tasks was that of dealing with the Philippines. The easy thing to do—the thing which appealed not only to lazy and selfish men, but to very many good men whose thought did not drive down to the root of things—was to leave the islands. Had we done this, a period of wild chaos would have supervened, and then some stronger power would have stepped in and seized the islands and have taken up the task which we in such a case would have flinched from performing. A less easy, but infinitely more absurd course, would have been to leave the islands ourselves, and at the same time to assert that we would not permit any one else to interfere with them. This particular course would have combined all the possible disadvantages of every other course which was advocated. It would have placed us in a humiliating position, because when the actual test came it would have been quite out of the question for us, after some striking deed of savagery had occurred in the islands, to stand by and prevent the re-entry of civilization into them. While the mere fact of our having threatened thus to guarantee the local tyrants and wrongdoers against outside interference by ourselves or others, would have put a premium upon every species of tyranny and anarchy within the islands.

Finally, there was the course which we adopted—not an easy course, and one fraught with danger and difficulty, as is generally the case in this world when some great feat is to be accomplished as an incident to working out national destiny. We made up our minds to stay in the islands—to put down violence—to establish peace and order—and then to introduce a just and wise civil rule accompanied by a measure of self-government which should increase as rapidly as the islanders showed themselves fit for it. It was certainly a formidable task; but think of the marvelously successful way in which it has been accomplished! The first and vitally important feat was the establishment of the supremacy of the American flag; and this had to be done by the effort of these gallant fellow-Americans of ours to whom so great a debt is due—the officers and enlisted men of the United States regular and volunteer forces. In a succession of campaigns, carried on in unknown tropic jungles against an elusive and treacherous foe vastly outnumbering them, under the most adverse conditions of climate, weather, and country, our troops completely broke the power of the insurgents, smashed their armies, and harried the broken robber bands into submission. In its last stages, the war against our rule sank into mere brigandage; and what our troops had to do was to hunt down the parties of ladrones. It was not an easy task which it was humanly possible to accomplish in a month or a year; and therefore after the first month and the first year had elapsed, some excellent people said that it couldn’t be done; but it was done. Month by month, year by year, with unwearied and patient resolution, our army in the Philippines did the task which it found ready at hand until the last vestige of organized insurrection was stamped out. I do not refer to the Moros, with whom we have exercised the utmost forbearance, but who may force us to chastise them if they persist in attacking our troops. We will do everything possible to avoid having trouble with them, but if they insist upon it it will come. Among the Filipinos proper, however, peace has come. Doubtless here and there sporadic outbreaks of brigandage will occur from time to time, but organized warfare against the American flag has ceased, and there is no reason to apprehend its recurrence. Our army in the islands has been reduced until it is not a fourth of what it was at the time the outbreak was at its height.

Step by step as the army conquered, the rule of the military was supplanted by the rule of the civil authorities—the soldier was succeeded by the civilian magistrate. The utmost care has been exercised in choosing the best type of Americans for the high civil positions, and the actual work of administration has been done, so far as possible, by native Filipino officials serving under these Americans. The success of the effort has been wonderful. Never has this country had a more upright or an abler body of public representatives than Governor Taft, Vice-Governor Wright, and their associates and subordinates in the Philippine Islands. It is a very difficult matter, practically, to apply the principles of an orderly free government to an Oriental people struggling upward out of barbarism and subjection. It is a task requiring infinite firmness, patience, tact, broadmindedness. All these qualities, and the countless others necessary, have been found in the civil and military officials who have been sent over to administer the islands. It was, of course, inevitable that there should be occasional failures; but it is astonishing how few these have been. Here and there the civil government which had been established in a given district had to be temporarily withdrawn because of some outbreak. Let me give you an idea of some of the difficulties. We have been trying to put into effect the principle of a popular choice of representative. In one district it proved to be wholly impossible to make the people understand how to vote. Finally they took a little hill, and put two candidates, one on one side and one on the other, and made the people walk up and stand by the candidate they wanted.

But at last, on the July 4th that has just passed—on the 126th anniversary of our independence—it was possible at the same time to declare amnesty throughout the islands and definitely to establish civil rule over all of them, excepting the country of the Mohammedan Moros, where the conditions were wholly different. Each inhabitant of the Philippines is now guaranteed his civil and religious rights, his rights to life, personal liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, subject only to not infringing the rights of others. It is worth noting that during these three or four years under us the Philippine people have attained to a greater degree of self-government, that they now have more to say as to how they shall be governed, than is the case with any people in the Orient which is under European rule. Nor is this all. Congress has, with far-seeing wisdom, heartily supported all that has been done by the Executive. Wise laws for the government of the Philippine Islands have been placed upon the statute books, and under those laws provision is made for the introduction into the Philippines of representative government, with only the delay absolutely necessary to allow for the establishment of definite peace, for the taking of a census, and the settling down of the country. In short, we are governing the Filipinos primarily in their interest, and for their very great benefit. And we have acted in practical fashion—not trying to lay down rules as to what should be done in the remote and uncertain future, but turning our attention to the instant need of things and meeting that need in the fullest and amplest way. It would be hard to say whether we owe most to our military or our civil representatives in the Philippines. The soldiers have shown splendid gallantry in the field; and they have done no less admirable work in preparing the provinces for civil government. The civil authorities have shown the utmost wisdom in doing a very difficult and important work, of vast extent. It would be hard to find in modern times a better example of successful constructive statesmanship than the American representatives have given to the Philippine Islands.

In the Philippines, as in Cuba, the instances of wrongdoing among either our civil or military representatives have been astonishingly few; and punishment has been meted with even-handed justice to all offenders.

Nor should it be forgotten that while we have thus acted in the interest of the islanders themselves, we have also helped our own people. Our interests are as great in the Pacific as in the Atlantic. The welfare of California, Oregon, and Washington is as vital to the nation as the welfare of New England, New York, and the South Atlantic States. The awakening of the Orient means very much to all the nations of Christendom, commercially no less than politically; and it would be short-sighted statesmanship on our part to refuse to take the necessary steps for securing a proper share to our people of this commercial future. The possession of the Philippines has helped us, as the securing of the open door in China has helped us. Already the government has taken the necessary steps to provide for the laying of a Pacific cable under conditions which safeguard absolutely the interests of the American public. Our commerce with the East is growing rapidly. Events have abundantly justified, alike from the moral and material standpoint, all that we have done in the Far East as a sequel to our war with Spain.

AT PROVIDENCE, R. I., AUGUST 23, 1902

_Mr. Governor, and you, my Fellow-citizens_:

We are passing through a period of great commercial prosperity, and such a period is as sure as adversity itself to bring mutterings of discontent. At a time when most men prosper somewhat some men always prosper greatly; and it is as true now as when the tower of Siloam fell upon all alike, that good fortune does not come solely to the just, nor bad fortune solely to the unjust. When the weather is good for crops it is good for weeds. Moreover, not only do the wicked flourish when the times are such that most men flourish, but, what is worse, the spirit of envy and jealousy springs up in the breasts of those who, though they may be doing fairly well themselves, see others no more deserving who do better.

Wise laws and fearless and upright administration of the laws can give the opportunity for such prosperity as we see about us. But that is all that they can do. When the conditions have been created which make prosperity possible, then each individual man must achieve it for himself by his own energy and thrift and business intelligence. If when people wax fat they kick, as they have kicked since the days of Jeshurun, they will speedily destroy their own prosperity. If they go into wild speculation and lose their heads they have lost that which no laws can supply. If in a spirit of sullen envy they insist upon pulling down those who have profited most in the years of fatness, they will bury themselves in the crash of the common disaster. It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best laws, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

The upshot of all this is that it is peculiarly incumbent upon us in a time of such material well-being, both collectively as a nation and individually as citizens, to show, each on his own account, that we possess the qualities of prudence, self-knowledge, and self-restraint. In our government we need above all things stability, fixity of economic policy; while remembering that this fixity must not be fossilization, that there must not be inability to shift our laws so as to meet our shifting national needs. There are real and great evils in our social and economic life, and these evils stand out in all their ugly baldness in time of prosperity; for the wicked who prosper are never a pleasant sight. There is every need of striving in all possible ways, individually and collectively, by combinations among ourselves and through the recognized governmental agencies, to cut out those evils. All I ask is to be sure that we do not use the knife with an ignorant zeal which would make it more dangerous to the patient than to the disease.

One of the features of the tremendous industrial development of the last generation has been the very great increase in private, and especially in corporate, fortunes. We may like this or not, just as we choose, but it is a fact nevertheless; and as far as we can see it is an inevitable result of the working of the various causes, prominent among them steam and electricity. Urban population has grown in this country, as in all civilized countries, much faster than the population as a whole during the last century. If it were not for that Rhode Island could not to-day be the State she is. Rhode Island has flourished as she has flourished because of the conditions which have brought about the great increase in urban life. There is evil in these conditions, but you can’t destroy it unless you destroy the civilization they have brought about. Where men are gathered together in great masses it inevitably results that they must work far more largely through combinations than where they live scattered and remote from one another. Many of us prefer the old conditions of life, under which the average man lived more to himself and by himself, where the average community was more self-dependent, and where even though the standard of comfort was lower on the average, yet there was less of the glaring inequality in worldly conditions which we now see about us in our great cities. It is not true that the poor have grown poorer; but some of the rich have grown so very much richer that, where multitudes of men are herded together in a limited space, the contrast strikes the onlooker as more violent than formerly. On the whole, our people earn more and live better than ever before, and the progress of which we are so proud could not have taken place had it not been for the upbuilding of industrial centres, such as this in which I am speaking.

But together with the good there has come a measure of evil. Life is not so simple as it was; and surely, both for the individual and the community, the simple life is normally the healthy life. There is not in the great cities the feeling of brotherhood which there is still in country localities; and the lines of social cleavage are far more deeply marked.

For some of the evils which have attended upon the good of the changed conditions we can at present see no complete remedy. For others the remedy must come by the action of men themselves in their private capacity, whether merely as individuals or by combination. For yet others some remedy can be found in legislative and executive action—national, State, or municipal. Much of the complaint against combinations is entirely unwarranted. Under present day conditions it is as necessary to have corporations in the business world as it is to have organizations, unions, among wage-workers. We have a right to ask in each case only this: that good, and not harm, shall follow. Exactly as labor organizations, when managed intelligently and in a spirit of justice and fair play, are of very great service not only to the wage-workers, but to the whole community, as has been shown again and again in the history of many such organizations; so wealth, not merely individual, but corporate, when used aright is not merely beneficial to the community as a whole, but is absolutely essential to the upbuilding of such a series of communities as those whose citizens I am now addressing. This is so obvious that it ought to be too trite to mention, and yet it is necessary to mention it when we see some of the attacks made upon wealth, as such.

Of course a great fortune if used wrongly is a menace to the community. A man of great wealth who does not use that wealth decently is, in a peculiar sense, a menace to the community, and so is the man who does not use his intellect aright. Each talent—the talent for making money, the talent for showing intellect at the bar, or in any other way—if unaccompanied by character, makes the possessor a menace to the community. But such a fact no more warrants us in attacking wealth than it does in attacking intellect. Every man of power, by the very fact of that power, is capable of doing damage to his neighbors; but we can not afford to discourage the development of such men merely because it is possible they may use their power for wrong ends. If we did so we should leave our history a blank, for we should have no great statesmen, soldiers, merchants, no great men of arts, of letters, of science. Doubtless on the average the most useful citizen to the community as a whole is the man to whom has been granted what the Psalmist asked for—neither poverty nor riches. But the great captain of industry, the man of wealth, who, alone or in combination with his fellows, drives through our great business enterprises, is a factor without whom the civilization that we see round about us here could not have been built up. Good, not harm, normally comes from the upbuilding of such wealth. Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

But there is other harm; and it is evident that we should try to do away with that. The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is in duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown. There is clearly need of supervision—need to possess the power of regulation of these great corporations through the representatives of the public—wherever, as in our own country at the present time, business corporations become so very powerful alike for beneficent work and for work that is not always beneficent. It is idle to say that there is no need for such supervision. There is, and a sufficient warrant for it is to be found in any one of the admitted evils appertaining to them.

We meet a peculiar difficulty under our system of government, because of the division of governmental power between the Nation and the States. When the industrial conditions were simple, very little control was needed, and the difficulties of exercising such control under our Constitution were not evident. Now the conditions are complicated and we find it hard to frame national legislation which shall be adequate; while as a matter of practical experience it has been shown that the States either can not or will not exercise a sufficient control to meet the needs of the case. Some of our States have excellent laws—laws which it would be well indeed to have enacted by the National Legislature. But the widespread differences in these laws, even between adjacent States, and the uncertainty of the power of enforcement, result practically in altogether insufficient control. I believe that the nation must assume this power of control by legislation; if necessary by constitutional amendment. The immediate necessity in dealing with trusts is to place them under the real, not the nominal, control of some sovereign to which, as its creatures, the trusts shall owe allegiance, and in whose courts the sovereign’s orders may be enforced.

This is not the case with the ordinary so-called “trust” to-day; for the trust nowadays is a large State corporation, which generally does business in other States, often with a tendency toward monopoly. Such a trust is an artificial creature not wholly responsible to or controllable by any legislation, either by State or nation, and not subject to the jurisdiction of any one court. Some governmental sovereign must be given full power over these artificial, and very powerful, corporate beings. In my judgment this sovereign must be the national government. When it has been given full power, then this full power can be used to control any evil influence, exactly as the government is now using the power conferred upon it by the Sherman anti-trust law.

Even when the power has been granted it would be most unwise to exercise it too much, to begin by too stringent legislation. The mechanism of modern business is as delicate and complicated as it is vast, and nothing would be more productive of evil to all of us, and especially to those least well off in this world’s goods, than ignorant meddling with this mechanism—above all, meddling in a spirit of class legislation or hatred or rancor. It is eminently necessary that the power should be had, but it is just as necessary that it should be exercised with wisdom and self-restraint. The first exercise of that power should be the securing of publicity among all great corporations doing an interstate business. The publicity, though non-inquisitorial, should be real and thorough as to all important facts with which the public has concern. Daylight is a powerful discourager of evil. Such publicity would by itself tend to cure the evils of which there is just complaint; it would show us if evils existed, and where the evils are imaginary, and it would show us what next ought to be done.

Above all, let us remember that our success in accomplishing anything depends very much upon our not trying to accomplish everything. Distrust whoever pretends to offer you a patent cure-all for every ill of the body politic, just as you would a man who offers a medicine which would cure every evil of your individual body. A medicine that is recommended to cure both asthma and a broken leg is not good for either. Mankind has moved slowly upward through the ages, sometimes a little faster, sometimes a little slower, but rarely indeed by leaps and bounds. At times a great crisis comes in which a great people, perchance led by a great man, can at white heat strike some mighty blow for the right—make a long stride in advance along the path of justice and of orderly liberty. But normally we must be content if each of us can do something—not all that we wish, but something—for the advancement of those principles of righteousness which underlie all real national greatness, all true civilization and freedom. I see no promise of any immediate and complete solution of all the problems we group together when we speak of the trust question. But we can make a beginning in solving these problems, and a good beginning, if only we approach the subject with a sufficiency of resolution, of honesty, and of that hard common-sense which is one of the most valuable, and not always one of the most common, assets in any nation’s greatness. The existing laws will be fully enforced as they stand on the statute books without regard to persons, and I think good has already come from their enforcement. I think, furthermore, that additional legislation should be had and can be had, which will enable us to accomplish much more along the same lines. No man can promise a perfect solution, at least in the immediate future. But something has already been done, and much more can be done if our people temperately and determinedly will that it shall be done.

In conclusion let me add one word. While we are not to be excused if we fail to do whatever is possible through the agency of government, we must keep ever in mind that no action of the government, no action by combination among ourselves, can take the place of the individual qualities to which in the long run every man must owe the success he can make of life. There never has been devised, and there never will be devised, any law which will enable a man to succeed save by the exercise of those qualities which have always been the prerequisites of success—the qualities of hard work, of keen intelligence, of unflinching will. Such action can supplement those qualities but it can not take their place. No action by the State can do more than supplement the initiative of the individual; and ordinarily the action of the State can do no more than to secure to each individual the chance to show under as favorable conditions as possible the stuff that there is in him.

AT SYMPHONY HALL, BOSTON, AUGUST 25, 1902

_Governor Crane, Mayor Collins, men and women of Boston_:

I want to take up this evening the general question of our economic and social relations, with specific reference to that problem with which I think our people are now greatly concerning themselves—the problem of our complex social condition as intensified by the existence of the great corporations which we rather loosely designate as trusts. I have not come here to say that I have discovered a patent cure-all for any evils. When people’s minds are greatly agitated on any subject, and especially when they feel deeply but rather vaguely that conditions are not right, it is far pleasanter in addressing them to be indifferent as to what you promise; but it is much less pleasant afterward when you come to try to carry out what has been promised. Of course the worth of a promise consists purely in the way in which the performance squares with it. That has two sides. In the first place, if a man is an honest man he will try just as hard to keep a promise made on the stump as one made off the stump. In the second place, if the people keep their heads they won’t wish promises to be made which are impossible of performance. You see, one side of that question represents my duty, and the other side yours.

Mankind goes ahead but slowly, and it goes ahead mainly through each of us trying to do the best that is in him and to do it in the sanest way. We have founded our Republic upon the theory that the average man will as a rule do the right thing, that in the long run the majority will decide for what is sane and wholesome. If our fathers were mistaken in that theory, if ever the times become such—not occasionally but persistently—that the mass of the people do what is unwholesome, what is wrong, then the Republic can not stand, I care not how good its laws, I care not what marvelous mechanism its Constitution may embody. Back of the laws, back of the administration, back of the system of government lies the man, lies the average manhood of our people, and in the long run we are going to go up or go down accordingly as the average standard of our citizenship does or does not wax in growth and grace.

The first requisite of good citizenship is that the man shall do the homely, every-day, humdrum duties well. A man is not a good citizen, I do not care how lofty his thoughts are about citizenship in the abstract, if in the concrete his actions do not bear them out; and it does not make much difference how high his aspirations for mankind at large may be, if he does not behave well in his own family those aspirations do not bear visible fruit. He must be a good bread-winner, he must take care of his wife and his children, he must be a neighbor whom his neighbors can trust, he must act squarely in his business relations,—he must do all those every-day ordinary duties first, or he is not a good citizen. But he must do more. In this country of ours the average citizen must devote a good deal of thought and time to the affairs of the State as a whole or those affairs will go backward; and he must devote that thought and that time steadily and intelligently. If there is any one quality that is not admirable, whether in a nation or in an individual, it is hysterics, either in religion or in anything else. The man or woman who makes up for ten days’ indifference to duty by an eleventh-day morbid repentance about that duty is of scant use in the world. Now in the same way it is of no possible use to decline to go through all the ordinary duties of citizenship for a long space of time and then suddenly to get up and feel very angry about something or somebody, not clearly defined, and demand reform, as if it were a concrete substance to be handed out forthwith.

This is preliminary to what I want to say to you about the whole question of great corporations as affecting the public. There are very many and very difficult problems with which we are faced as the results of the forces which have been in play for more than the lifetime of a generation. It is worse than useless for any of us to rail at or regret the great growth of our industrial civilization during the last half century. Speaking academically, we can, according to our several temperaments, regret that the old days with the old life have vanished, or not, just as we choose; but we are here to-night only because of the play of those great forces. There is but little use in regretting that things have been shaping themselves differently from what we might have preferred. The practical thing to do is to face the conditions as they are and see if we can not get the best there is in them out of them. Now we shall not get a complete or perfect solution for all of the evils attendant upon the development of the trusts by any single action on our part. A good many actions in a good many different ways will be required before we get many of those evils even partially remedied. We must first of all think clearly; we must probably experiment somewhat; we must above all show by our actions that our interest is permanent and not spasmodic; and we must see that all proper steps are taken toward the solution. Now of course all this is perfectly trite. Every one who thinks knows that the only way in which any problem of great importance was ever successfully solved was by consistent and persistent effort toward a given end—effort that did not cease with any one election or with any one year, but was continued steadily, temperately, but resolutely, toward a given end. It is a little difficult to set clearly before us all of the evils attendant upon the working of some of our great corporations, but I think that those gentlemen, and especially those gentlemen of large means, who deny that the evils exist are acting with great folly. So far from being against property when I ask that the question of the trusts be taken up, I am acting in the most conservative sense in property’s interest. When a great corporation is sued for violating the anti-trust law, it is not a move against property, it is a move in favor of property, because when we make it evident that all men, great and small alike, have to obey the law, we put the safeguard of the law around all men. When we make it evident that no man shall be excused for violating the law, we make it evident that every man will be protected from violations of the law.

Now one of the great troubles—I am inclined to think much the greatest trouble—in any immediate handling of the question of the trusts comes from our system of government. Under this system it is difficult to say where the power is lodged to deal with these evils. Remember that I am not saying that even if we had all the power we could completely solve the trust question. If what we read in the papers is true, international trusts are now being planned. It is going to be very difficult for any set of laws on our part to deal completely with a problem which becomes international in its bearings. But a great deal can be done in various ways even now—a great deal is being done—and a great deal more can be done, if we see that the power is lodged somewhere to do it. On the whole, our system of government has worked marvelously well—the system of divided functions of government, of a scheme under which Maine, Louisiana, Oregon, Idaho, New York, Illinois, South Carolina, can all come together for certain purposes, and yet each be allowed to work out its salvation as it desires along certain other lines. On the whole, this has worked well; but in some respects it has worked ill. While I most firmly believe in fixity of policy, I do not believe that that policy should be fossilized, and when conditions change we must change our governmental methods to meet them. I believe with all my heart in the New England town meeting, but you can’t work the New England town meeting in Boston—it is too big. You must devise something else. If you look back in the history of Boston you will find that Boston was very reluctant to admit this particular truth for some time in the first decades of the nineteenth century. When this government was founded there were no great individual or corporate fortunes, and commerce and industry were being carried on very much as they had been carried on in the days when Nineveh and Babylon stood in the Mesopotamian Valley. Sails, oars, wheels—these were the instruments of commerce. The pack train, the wagon train, the rowboat, the sailing craft—these were the methods of commerce. Everything has been revolutionized in the business world since then, and the progress of civilization from being a dribble has become a torrent. There was no particular need at that time of bothering as to whether the nation or the State had control of corporations. They were easy to control. Now, however, the exact reverse is the case. And remember when I say corporations I do not mean merely trusts technically so-called, merely combinations of corporations, or corporations under certain peculiar conditions. For instance, some time ago the Attorney-General took action against a certain trust. There was considerable discussion as to whether the trust aimed at would not seek to get out from under the law by becoming a single corporation. Now, I want laws that will enable us to deal with any evil no matter what shape it takes. I want to see the government able to get at it definitely, so that the action of the government can not be evaded by any turning within or without Federal or State statutes. At present we have really no efficient control over a big corporation which does business in more than one State. Frequently the corporation has nothing whatever to do with the State in which it is incorporated except to get incorporated; and all its business may be done in entirely different communities—communities which may object very much to the methods of incorporation in the State named. I do not believe that you can get any action by any State, I do not believe it practicable to get action by all the States that will give us satisfactory control of the trusts, of big corporations; and the result is at present that we have a great, powerful, artificial creation which has no creator to which it is responsible. The creator creates it and then it goes and operates somewhere else; and there is no interest on the part of the creator to deal with it. It does not do anything where the creator has power; it operates entirely outside of the creator’s jurisdiction.