State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt

T >> Theodore Roosevelt >> State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37

This eBook was produced by James Linden.

The addresses are separated by three asterisks: ***

Dates of addresses by Theodore Roosevelt in this eBook:
December 3, 1901
December 2, 1902
December 7, 1903
December 6, 1904
December 5, 1905
December 3, 1906
December 3, 1907
December 8, 1908

***

State of the Union Address
Theodore Roosevelt
December 3, 1901

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

The Congress assembles this year under the shadow of a great calamity. On
the sixth of September, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist while
attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, and died in that city on
the fourteenth of that month.

Of the last seven elected Presidents, he is the third who has been
murdered, and the bare recital of this fact is sufficient to justify grave
alarm among all loyal American citizens. Moreover, the circumstances of
this, the third assassination of an American President, have a peculiarly
sinister significance. Both President Lincoln and President Garfield were
killed by assassins of types unfortunately not uncommon in history;
President Lincoln falling a victim to the terrible passions aroused by four
years of civil war, and President Garfield to the revengeful vanity of a
disappointed office-seeker. President McKinley was killed by an utterly
depraved criminal belonging to that body of criminals who object to all
governments, good and bad alike, who are against any form of popular
liberty if it is guaranteed by even the most just and liberal laws, and who
are as hostile to the upright exponent of a free people's sober will as to
the tyrannical and irresponsible despot.

It is not too much to say that at the time of President McKinley's death he
was the most widely loved man in all the United States; while we have never
had any public man of his position who has been so wholly free from the
bitter animosities incident to public life. His political opponents were
the first to bear the heartiest and most generous tribute to the broad
kindliness of nature, the sweetness and gentleness of character which so
endeared him to his close associates. To a standard of lofty integrity in
public life he united the tender affections and home virtues which are
all-important in the make-up of national character. A gallant soldier in
the great war for the Union, he also shone as an example to all our people
because of his conduct in the most sacred and intimate of home relations.
There could be no personal hatred of him, for he never acted with aught but
consideration for the welfare of others. No one could fail to respect him
who knew him in public or private life. The defenders of those murderous
criminals who seek to excuse their criminality by asserting that it is
exercised for political ends, inveigh against wealth and irresponsible
power. But for this assassination even this base apology cannot be urged.

President McKinley was a man of moderate means, a man whose stock sprang
from the sturdy tillers of the soil, who had himself belonged among the
wage-workers, who had entered the Army as a private soldier. Wealth was not
struck at when the President was assassinated, but the honest toil which is
content with moderate gains after a lifetime of unremitting labor, largely
in the service of the public. Still less was power struck at in the sense
that power is irresponsible or centered in the hands of any one individual.
The blow was not aimed at tyranny or wealth. It was aimed at one of the
strongest champions the wage-worker has ever had; at one of the most
faithful representatives of the system of public rights and representative
government who has ever risen to public office. President McKinley filled
that political office for which the entire people vote, and no President
not even Lincoln himself--was ever more earnestly anxious to represent the
well thought-out wishes of the people; his one anxiety in every crisis was
to keep in closest touch with the people--to find out what they thought and
to endeavor to give expression to their thought, after having endeavored to
guide that thought aright. He had just been reelected to the Presidency
because the majority of our citizens, the majority of our farmers and
wage-workers, believed that he had faithfully upheld their interests for
four years. They felt themselves in close and intimate touch with him. They
felt that he represented so well and so honorably all their ideals and
aspirations that they wished him to continue for another four years to
represent them.

And this was the man at whom the assassin struck That there might be
nothing lacking to complete the Judas-like infamy of his act, he took
advantage of an occasion when the President was meeting the people
generally; and advancing as if to take the hand out-stretched to him in
kindly and brotherly fellowship, he turned the noble and generous
confidence of the victim into an opportunity to strike the fatal blow.
There is no baser deed in all the annals of crime.

The shock, the grief of the country, are bitter in the minds of all who saw
the dark days, while the President yet hovered between life and death. At
last the light was stilled in the kindly eyes and the breath went from the
lips that even in mortal agony uttered no words save of forgiveness to his
murderer, of love for his friends, and of faltering trust in the will of
the Most High. Such a death, crowning the glory of such a life, leaves us
with infinite sorrow, but with such pride in what he had accomplished and
in his own personal character, that we feel the blow not as struck at him,
but as struck at the Nation We mourn a good and great President who is
dead; but while we mourn we are lifted up by the splendid achievements of
his life and the grand heroism with which he met his death.

When we turn from the man to the Nation, the harm done is so great as to
excite our gravest apprehensions and to demand our wisest and most resolute
action. This criminal was a professed anarchist, inflamed by the teachings
of professed anarchists, and probably also by the reckless utterances of
those who, on the stump and in the public press, appeal to the dark and
evil spirits of malice and greed, envy and sullen hatred. The wind is sowed
by the men who preach such doctrines, and they cannot escape their share of
responsibility for the whirlwind that is reaped. This applies alike to the
deliberate demagogue, to the exploiter of sensationalism, and to the crude
and foolish visionary who, for whatever reason, apologizes for crime or
excites aimless discontent.

The blow was aimed not at this President, but at all Presidents; at every
symbol of government. President McKinley was as emphatically the embodiment
of the popular will of the Nation expressed through the forms of law as a
New England town meeting is in similar fashion the embodiment of the
law-abiding purpose and practice of the people of the town. On no
conceivable theory could the murder of the President be accepted as due to
protest against "inequalities in the social order," save as the murder of
all the freemen engaged in a town meeting could be accepted as a protest
against that social inequality which puts a malefactor in jail. Anarchy is
no more an expression of "social discontent" than picking pockets or
wife-beating.

The anarchist, and especially the anarchist in the United States, is merely
one type of criminal, more dangerous than any other because he represents
the same depravity in a greater degree. The man who advocates anarchy
directly or indirectly, in any shape or fashion, or the man who apologizes
for anarchists and their deeds, makes himself morally accessory to murder
before the fact. The anarchist is a criminal whose perverted instincts lead
him to prefer confusion and chaos to the most beneficent form of social
order. His protest of concern for workingmen is outrageous in its impudent
falsity; for if the political institutions of this country do not afford
opportunity to every honest and intelligent son of toil, then the door of
hope is forever closed against him. The anarchist is everywhere not merely
the enemy of system and of progress, but the deadly foe of liberty. If ever
anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last for but one red moment, to be
succeeded, for ages by the gloomy night of despotism.

For the anarchist himself, whether he preaches or practices his doctrines,
we need not have one particle more concern than for any ordinary murderer.
He is not the victim of social or political injustice. There are no wrongs
to remedy in his case. The cause of his criminality is to be found in his
own evil passions and in the evil conduct of those who urge him on, not in
any failure by others or by the State to do justice to him or his. He is a
malefactor and nothing else. He is in no sense, in no shape or way, a
"product of social conditions," save as a highwayman is "produced" by the
fact than an unarmed man happens to have a purse. It is a travesty upon the
great and holy names of liberty and freedom to permit them to be invoked in
such a cause. No man or body of men preaching anarchistic doctrines should
be allowed at large any more than if preaching the murder of some specified
private individual. Anarchistic speeches, writings, and meetings are
essentially seditious and treasonable.

I earnestly recommend to the Congress that in the exercise of its wise
discretion it should take into consideration the coming to this country of
anarchists or persons professing principles hostile to all government and
justifying the murder of those placed in authority. Such individuals as
those who not long ago gathered in open meeting to glorify the murder of
King Humbert of Italy perpetrate a crime, and the law should ensure their
rigorous punishment. They and those like them should be kept out of this
country; and if found here they should be promptly deported to the country
whence they came; and far-reaching. provision should be made for the
punishment of those who stay. No matter calls more urgently for the wisest
thought of the Congress.

The Federal courts should be given jurisdiction over any man who kills or
attempts to kill the President or any man who by the Constitution or by law
is in line of succession for the Presidency, while the punishment for an
unsuccessful attempt should be proportioned to the enormity of the offense
against our institutions.

Anarchy is a crime against the whole human race; and all mankind should
band against the anarchist. His crime should be made an offense against the
law of nations, like piracy and that form of man-stealing known as the
slave trade; for it is of far blacker infamy than either. It should be so
declared by treaties among all civilized powers. Such treaties would give
to the Federal Government the power of dealing with the crime.

A grim commentary upon the folly of the anarchist position was afforded by
the attitude of the law toward this very criminal who had just taken the
life of the President. The people would have torn him limb from limb if it
had not been that the law he defied was at once invoked in his behalf. So
far from his deed being committed on behalf of the people against the
Government, the Government was obliged at once to exert its full police
power to save him from instant death at the hands of the people. Moreover,
his deed worked not the slightest dislocation in our governmental system,
and the danger of a recurrence of such deeds, no matter how great it might
grow, would work only in the direction of strengthening and giving
harshness to the forces of order. No man will ever be restrained from
becoming President by any fear as to his personal safety. If the risk to
the President's life became great, it would mean that the office would more
and more come to be filled by men of a spirit which would make them
resolute and merciless in dealing with every friend of disorder. This great
country will not fall into anarchy, and if anarchists should ever become a
serious menace to its institutions, they would not merely be stamped out,
but would involve in their own ruin every active or passive sympathizer
with their doctrines. The American people are slow to wrath, but when their
wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame.

During the last five years business confidence has been restored, and the
nation is to be congratulated because of its present abounding prosperity.
Such prosperity can never be created by law alone, although it is easy
enough to destroy it by mischievous laws. If the hand of the Lord is heavy
upon any country, if flood or drought comes, human wisdom is powerless to
avert the calamity. Moreover, no law can guard us against the consequences
of our own folly. The men who are idle or credulous, the men who seek gains
not by genuine work with head or hand but by gambling in any form, are
always a source of menace not only to themselves but to others. If the
business world loses its head, it loses what legislation cannot supply.
Fundamentally the welfare of each citizen, and therefore the welfare of the
aggregate of citizens which makes the nation, must rest upon individual
thrift and energy, resolution, and intelligence. Nothing can take the place
of this individual capacity; but wise legislation and honest and
intelligent administration can give it the fullest scope, the largest
opportunity to work to good effect.

The tremendous and highly complex industrial development which went on with
ever accelerated rapidity during the latter half of the nineteenth century
brings us face to face, at the beginning of the twentieth, with very
serious social problems. The old laws, and the old customs which had almost
the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to regulate the
accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the industrial changes which
have so enormously increased the productive power of mankind, they are no
longer sufficient.

The growth of cities has gone on beyond comparison faster than the growth
of the country, and the upbuilding of the great industrial centers has
meant a startling increase, not merely in the aggregate of wealth, but in
the number of very large individual, and especially of very large
corporate, fortunes. The creation of these great corporate fortunes has not
been due to the tariff nor to any other governmental action, but to natural
causes in the business world, operating in other countries as they operate
in our own.

The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is wholly
without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown richer the poor
have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the average man, the
wage-worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well off as in this
country and at the present time. There have been abuses connected with the
accumulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a fortune accumulated in
legitimate business can be accumulated by the person specially benefited
only on condition of conferring immense incidental benefits upon others.
Successful enterprise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can only
exist if the conditions are such as to offer great prizes as the rewards of
success.

The captains of industry who have driven the railway systems across this
continent, who have built up our commerce, who have developed our
manufactures, have on the whole done great good to our people. Without them
the material development of which we are so justly proud could never have
taken place. Moreover, we should recognize the immense importance of this
material development of leaving as unhampered as is compatible with the
public good the strong and forceful men upon whom the success of business
operations inevitably rests. The slightest study of business conditions
will satisfy anyone capable of forming a judgment that the personal
equation is the most important factor in a business operation; that the
business ability of the man at the head of any business concern, big or
little, is usually the factor which fixes the gulf between striking success
and hopeless failure.

An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is to be
found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. The same
business conditions which have produced the great aggregations of corporate
and individual wealth have made them very potent factors in international
Commercial competition. Business concerns which have the largest means at
their disposal and are managed by the ablest men are naturally those which
take the lead in the strife for commercial supremacy among the nations of
the world. America has only just begun to assume that commanding position
in the international business world which we believe will more and more be
hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeoparded,
especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural
resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our
people make foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be
most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of our Nation.

Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with ignorant
violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the
interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national life --the rule
which underlies all others--is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we
shall go up or down together. There are exceptions; and in times of
prosperity some will prosper far more, and in times of adversity, some will
suffer far more, than others; but speaking generally, a period of good
times means that all share more or less in them, and in a period of hard
times all feel the stress to a greater or less degree. It surely ought not
to be necessary to enter into any proof of this statement; the memory of
the lean years which began in 1893 is still vivid, and we can contrast them
with the conditions in this very year which is now closing. Disaster to
great business enterprises can never have its effects limited to the men at
the top. It spreads throughout, and while it is bad for everybody, it is
worst for those farthest down. The capitalist may be shorn of his luxuries;
but the wage-worker may be deprived of even bare necessities.

The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be
taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many
of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial
combinations which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known
as "trusts," appeal especially to hatred and fear. These are precisely the
two emotions, particularly when combined with ignorance, which unfit men
for the exercise of cool and steady judgment. In facing new industrial
conditions, the whole history of the world shows that legislation will
generally be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm
inquiry and with sober self-restraint. Much of the legislation directed at
the trusts would have been exceedingly mischievous had it not also been
entirely ineffective. In accordance with a well-known sociological law, the
ignorant or reckless agitator has been the really effective friend of the
evils which he has been nominally opposing. In dealing with business
interests, for the Government to undertake by crude and ill-considered
legislation to do what may turn out to be bad, would be to incur the risk
of such far-reaching national disaster that it would be preferable to
undertake nothing at all. The men who demand the impossible or the
undesirable serve as the allies of the forces with which they are nominally
at war, for they hamper those who would endeavor to find out in rational
fashion what the wrongs really are and to what extent and in what manner it
is practicable to apply remedies.

All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and grave
evils, one of the chief being over-capitalization because of its many
baleful consequences; and a resolute and practical effort must be made to
correct these evils.

There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that
the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and
tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This springs from no spirit of
envy or uncharitableness, nor lack of pride in the great industrial
achievements that have placed this country at the head of the nations
struggling for commercial supremacy. It does not rest upon a lack of
intelligent appreciation of the necessity of meeting changing and changed
conditions of trade with new methods, nor upon ignorance of the fact that
combination of capital in the effort to accomplish great things is
necessary when the world's progress demands that great things be done. It
is based upon sincere conviction that combination and concentration should
be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled;
and in my judgment this conviction is right.

It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require
that when men receive from Government the privilege of doing business under
corporate form, which frees them from individual responsibility, and
enables them to call into their enterprises the capital of the public, they
shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations as to the value of the
property in which the capital is to be invested. Corporations engaged in
interstate commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a
license working to the public injury. It should be as much the aim of those
who seek for social- betterment to rid the business world of crimes of
cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence. Great
corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our
institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they
work in harmony with these institutions.

The first essential in determining how to deal with the great industrial
combinations is knowledge of the facts--publicity. In the interest of the
public, the Government should have the right to inspect and examine the
workings of the great corporations engaged in interstate business.
Publicity is the only sure remedy which we can now invoke. What further
remedies are needed in the way of governmental regulation, or taxation, can
only be determined after publicity has been obtained, by process of law,
and in the course of administration. The first requisite is knowledge, full
and complete--knowledge which may be made public to the world.

Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint stock or other
associations, depending upon any statutory law for their existence or
privileges, should be subject to proper governmental supervision, and full
and accurate information as to their operations should be made public
regularly at reasonable intervals.

The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though organized in one
State, always do business in many States, often doing very little business
in the State where they are incorporated. There is utter lack of uniformity
in the State laws about them; and as no State has any exclusive interest in
or power over their acts, it has in practice proved impossible to get
adequate regulation through State action. Therefore, in the interest of the
whole people, the Nation should, without interfering with the power of the
States in the matter itself, also assume power of supervision and
regulation over all corporations doing an interstate business. This is
especially true where the corporation derives a portion of its wealth from
the existence of some monopolistic element or tendency in its business.
There would be no hardship in such supervision; banks are subject to it,
and in their case it is now accepted as a simple matter of course. Indeed,
it is probable that supervision of corporations by the National Government
need not go so far as is now the case with the supervision exercised over
them by so conservative a State as Massachusetts, in order to produce
excellent results.

When the Constitution was adopted, at the end of the eighteenth century, no
human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes, alike in industrial and
political conditions, which were to take place by the beginning of the
twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a matter of course that
the several States were the proper authorities to regulate, so far as was
then necessary, the comparatively insignificant and strictly localized
corporate bodies of the day. The conditions are now wholly different and
wholly different action is called for. I believe that a law can be framed
which will enable the National Government to exercise control along the
lines above indicated; profiting by the experience gained through the
passage and administration of the Interstate-Commerce Act. If, however, the
judgment of the Congress is that it lacks the constitutional power to pass
such an act, then a constitutional amendment should be submitted to confer
the power.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37