Address of President Roosevelt on the occasion of the laying of the corner stone of the Pilgrim memorial monument

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Copy 1

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON
THE OCCASION OF THE LAYING OF THE
CORNER STONE OF THE PILGRIM ME-
MORIAL MONUMENT, PROVINCETOWN,
MASSACHUSEnS, AUGUST 20, 1907 ^ ^

^

WASHINGTON

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

1907

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON
THE OCCASION OF THE LAYING OF THE
CORNER STONE OF THE PILGRIM ME-
MORIAL MONUMENT, PROVINCETOWN,
MASSACHUSETTS, AUGUST 20, 1907 ^ ^

^

WASHINGTON

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

1907

TR'W

Oft.*?. A- '2-'^

j^f^;^<^rJ>'

It is not too much to say that the event
commemorated by the monument which
we have come here to dedicate was one
of those rare events which can in good
faith be called of world importance. The
coming hither of the Pilgrim three cen-
turies ago, followed in far larger numbers
by his sterner kinsmen, the Puritans,
shaped the destinies of this continent,
and therefore profoundly affected the

(3)

4

destiny of the whole world. Men of

other races, the Frenchman and the
Spaniard, the Dutchman, the German, the
Scotchman, the Irishman, and the Swede,
made settlements within what is now the
United States, during the colonial period
of our history and before the Declaration
of Independence; and since then there
has been an ever-swelling immigration
from Ireland and from the mainland of
Europe ; but it was the Englishman who
settled in Virginia and the Englishman

5

who settled in Massachusetts who did

most in shaping the lines of our national
development.

We can not as a nation be too pro-
foundly grateful for the fact that the Puri-
tan has stamped his influence so deeply
on our national life. We need have but
scant patience with the men who now rail
at the Puritan's faults. They were evi-

dent, of course, for it is a quality of strong i
natures that their failings, like their vir-
tues, should stand out in bold relief; but

6

there is nothing easier than to belittle the

great men of the past by dvvelUng only on
the points where they come short of the
universally recognized standards of the
present. Men must be judged with refer-
ence to the age in which they dwell,
and the work they have to do. The
Puritan's task was to conquer a con-
tinent; not merely to overrun it, but
to settle it, to till it, to build upon it
a high industrial and social life; and,
while engaged in the rough work of

V

7

taming the shaggy wilderness, at that very

time also to lay deep the immovable foun-
dations of our whole American system of
I civil, political, and religious liberty
achieved through the orderly process of

1 law. This was the work allotted him to

1

do; this is the work he did; and only a
master spirit among men could have
done it.

We have traveled far since his day.
That liberty of conscience which he de-
manded for himself, we now realize must

8

be as freely accorded to others as it is

resolutely insisted upon for ourselves.
The splendid qualities which he left
to his children, we other Americans
who are not of Puritan blood also claim
as our heritage. You, sons of the Puri-
tanS; and we, who are descended from
races whom the Puritans would have
deemed alien — we are all Americans to-
gether. We all feel the same pride in the
genesis, in the history, of our people; and
therefore this shrine of Puritanism is one

9
at which we all gather to pay homage, no

matter from what country our ancestors

sprang.

We have gained some things that the

Puritan had not — we of this generation,

we of the twentieth century, here in this

great Republic; but we are also in danger

of losing certain things which the Puritan

had and which we can by no manner of

means afford to lose. We have gained

a joy of living which he had not, and

which it is a good thing for every people

lO

to have and to develop. Let us see
to it that we do not lose what is
more important still ; that we do not
lose the Puritan's iron sense of duty,
his unbending, unflinching will to do
the right as it was given him to see the

I

right. It is a good thing that life should
gain in sweetness, but only provided that
it does not lose in strength. Ease and
rest and pleasure are good things, but
only if they come as the reward of work
well done, of a good fight well won, of

1 1

strong effort resolutely made and crowned

by high achievement. The life of mere
pleasure, of mere effortless ease, is as
ignoble for a nation as for an individual.
The man is but a poor father who teaches
his sons that ease and pleasure should be
their chief objects in life ; the woman who
is a mere petted toy, incapable of serious
purpose, shrinking from effort and duty,
is more pitiable than the veriest over-
worked drudge. So he is but a poor
leader of the people, but a poor national

V

12

adviser, who seeks to make the nation in
any way subordinate effort to ease, who
would teach the people not to prize as the
greatest blessing the chance to do any
work, no matter how hard, if it becomes
their duty to do it. To the sons of the
Puritans it is almost needless to say that the
lesson above all others which Puritanism can
teach this nation is the all-importance of
j— iheLjcesolute performance of duty. If we are
men we will pass by with contemptuous
disdain alike the advisers who would

13

seek to lead us into the paths of ignoble

ease and those who would teach us to
admire successful wrongdoing. Our
ideals should be high, and yet they
should be capable of achievement in
practical fashion; and we are as
little to be excused if we permit our ideals
to be tainted with what is sordid and
mean and base, as if we allow our power
of achievement to atrophy and become
either incapable of effort or capable only
of such fantastic effort as to accomplish

nothing of permanant good. The true
doctrine to preach to this nation, as to
the individuals composing this nation, is
not the life of ease, but the life of effort.
If it were in my power to promise the
people of this land anything, I would not
promise them pleasure. I would promise
them that stern happiness which comes
from the sense of having done in practical
fashion a difficult work which was worth
doing.

The Puritan owed his extraordinary

15

success in subduing this continent and

making it the foundation for a social life
of ordered liberty primarily to the fact
that he combined in a very remarkable
degree both the power of individual
initiative, of individual self-help, and the
power of acting in combination with his
fellows; and that furthermore he joined
to a high heart that shrewd common
sense which saves a man from the
besetting sins of the visionary and the
doctrinaire. He was stout hearted and

i6
hard headed. He had lofty purposes,

but he had practical good sense, too.
He could hold his own in the rough
workaday world without clamorous insist-
ence upon being helped by others, and yet
he could combine with others whenever it
became necessary to do a job which could
not be as well done by any one man indi-
vidually.

These were the qualities which enabled
him to do his work, and they are the very
qualities which we must show in doing our

I

17

work to-day. There is no use in our com-
ing here to pay homage to the men who
founded this nation unless we first of all
come in the spirit of trying to do our work
to-day as they did their work in the yester-
days that have vanished. The problems
shift from generation to generation, but the
spirit in which they must be approached,
if they are to be successfully solved, re-
mains ever the same. The Puritan tamed
the wilderness, and built up a free govern-
ment on the stump-dotted clearings amid

f

i8

the primeval forest. His descendants must

I try to shape the life of our complex indus-

I trial civilization by new devices, by new

i
i
I methods, so as to achieve in the end the

!

' same results of justice and fair dealing

toward all. He cast aside nothing old

merely for the sake of innovation, yet he

did not hesitate to adopt anything new that

would save his purpose. When he planted

his commonwealths on this rugged coast -

he faced wholly new conditions and

he had to devise new methods of

19

meeting them. So we of to-day face

wholly new conditions in our social and
industrial life. We should certainly not
adopt any new scheme for grappling with
them merely because it is new and un-
tried; but we can not afford to shrink
from grappling with them because they
can only be grappled with by some new
scheme.

The Puritan was no Laodicean, no
laissez-faire theorist. When he saw con-
duct which was in violation of his rights —

\

20
of the rights of man, the rights of God, as

he understood them — he attempted to
regulate such conduct with instant,
unquestioning promptness and effective-
ness. If there was no other way to
secure conformity with the rule of right,
then he smote down the transgressor
with the iron of his wrath. The spirit of
the Puritan was a spirit which never
shrank from regulation of conduct if such
regulation was necessary for the public
weal; and this is the spirit which we

21

must show to-day whenever it is nec-
essary.

The utterly changed conditions of our
national life necessitate changes in certain
of our laws, of our governmental methods.
Our federal system of government is based
upon the theory of leaving to each
community, to each State, the con-
trol over those things which affect
only its own members and which the
people of the locality themselves can
best grapple with, while providing

22

for national regulation in those matters
which necessarily affect the nation as a
whole. It seems to me that such questions
as national sovereignty and state's rights
need to be treated not empirically or aca-
demically, but from the standpoint of the
interests of the people as a whole. National
sovereignty is to be upheld in so far as it
means the sovereignty of the people used
for the real and ultimate good of the people;
and state's rights are to be upheld in so
far as they mean the people's rights.

23

Especially is this true in dealing with the
relations of the people as a whole to the
great corporations which are the distin-
guishing feature of modern business con-
ditions.

Experience has shown that it is nec-
essary to exercise a far more efficient con-
trol than at present over the business use
of those vast fortunes, chiefly corporate,
which are used (as under modern* condi-
tions they almost invariably are) in inter-
state business. When the Constitution

24

was created none of the conditions of
modern business existed. They are
wholly new and we must create new
agencies to deal effectively with them.
There is no objection in the minds
of this people to any man's earning
any amount of money if he does it hon-
estly and fairly, if he gets it as the result
of special skill and enterprise, as a re-
ward of ample service actually rendered.
\ But there is a growing determination that
no man shall amass a great fortune by

25

special privilege, by chicanery and wrong-
doing, so far as it is in the power of
legislation to prevent; and that a
fortune, however amassed, shall not have

a business use that is antisocial. ' Most

— I

large corporations do a business that is
not confined to any one State. Experi-
ence has shown that the effort to con-
trol these corporations by mere State
action can not produce wholesome re-
sults. In most cases such effort fails to
correct the real abuses of which the cor-

26

poration is or may be guilty; while in
other cases the effort is apt to cause
either hardship to the corporation itself,
or else hardship to neighboring States
which have not tried to grapple with the
problem in the same manner; and of
course we must be as scrupulous to safe-
guard the rights of the corporations as to
exact from them in return a full measure
of justice to the public. I believe in a
national incorporation law for corporations
engaged in interstate business. I believe,

27

furthermore, that the need for action
is most pressing as regards those cor-
porations which, because they are
common carriers, exercise a quasi-
pubHc function; and which can be com-
pletely controlled, in all respects by the
Federal Government, by the exercise of
the power conferred under the interstate-
commerce clause, and, if necessary, under
the post-road clause, of the Constitu-
tion. During the last few years we
have taken marked strides in advance

28

along the road of proper regulation of
these railroad corporations; but we must
not stop in the work. The National Gov-
ernment should exercise over them a
similar supervision and control to that
which it exercises over national banks.
We can do this only by proceeding far-
ther along the lines marked out by the
recent national legislation.

In dealing with any totally new set of
conditions there must at the outset be hesi-
tation and experiment. Such has been our

29

experience in dealing with the enormous
concentration of capital employed in inter-
state business. Not only the legislatures
but the courts and the people need gradu-
ally to be educated so that they may see

what the real wrongs are and what the

real remedies. Almost every big business
concern is engaged in interstate com-
merce, and such a concern must not be
allowed by a dexterous shifting of posi-
tion, as has been too often the case in
the past, to escape thereby all responsi-

30

bility either to State or to nation. The

American people- became firmly con-
vinced of the need of control over
these great aggregations of capital, espe-
cially where they had a monopolistic
tendency, before they became quite clear
as to the proper way of achieving the con-
trol. Through their representatives in
Congress they tried two remedies, which
were to a large degree, at least as
interpreted by the courts, contradic-
tory. On the one hand, under the anti-

31
trust law the effort was made to prohibit

all combination, whether it was or was not
hurtful or beneficial to the public. On
the other hand, through the interstate-
commerce law a beginning was made in
exercising such supervision and control
over combinations as to prevent their
doing anything harmful to the body
politic. The first law, the so-called Sher-
man law, has filled a useful place, for it
bridges over the transition period until the
American people shall definitely make up

32

its mind that it will exercise over the great
corporations that thoroughgoing and radi-
cal control which it is certain ultimately to
find necessary. The principle of the Sher-
man law so far as it prohibits combina-
tions which, whether because of their extent
or of their character, are harmful to
the public must always be preserved.
Ultimately, and 1 hope with reason-
able speed, the National Government
must pass laws which, while increasing
the supervisory and regulatory power of

33
the Government, also permits such useful

combinations as are made with absolute
openness and as the representatives of the
Government may previously approve.
But it will not be possible to permit such
combinations save as the second stage in
a course of proceedings of which the first
stage must be the exercise of a far more
complete control by the National Gov-
ernment.

In dealing with those who offend
against the antitrust and interstate com-

34

merce laws the Department of Justice has

to encounter many and great difficulties.
Often men who have been guilty of \'io-
lating these laws have really acted in
criminal fashion, and if possible should be
proceeded against criminally; and there-
fore it is advisable that there should
be a clause in these laws providing
for such criminal action, and for pun-
ishment by imprisonment as well as
by fine. But, as is well known, in a
criminal action the law is strictly con-

35
strued in favor of the defendant, and in

our country, at least, both judge and

jury are far more inclined to consider his

rights than they are the interests of the

general public; while in addition it is

always true that a man's general practices

may be so bad that a civil action

will lie when it may not be possible

to convict him of any one criminal act.

There is unfortunately a certain number

of our fellow-countrymen who seem to

accept the view that unless a man can be

36
proved guilty of some particular crime he

shall be counted a good citizen, no mat-
ter how infamous the life he has led,
no matter how pernicious his doctrines or
his practices. This is the view announced
from time to time with clamorous insist-
ence, now by a group ol predatory capi-
talists, now by a group of sinister
anarchistic leaders and agitators, when-
ever a special champion of either class,
no matter how evil his general life, is
acquitted of some one specific crime.

37
Such a view is wicked whether applied to

capitalist or labor leader, to rich man or
poor man; (and by the way, I take this op-
portunity of stating that all that I have said
in the past as to desirable and undesirable
citizens remains true, and that I stand by it).
We have to take this feeling into
account when we are debating whether
it is possible to get a conviction in
a criminal proceeding against some rich
trust magnate, many of whose actions
are severely to be condemned from

38

the moral and social standpoint, but no

one of whose actions seems clearly to
establish such technical guilt as will en-
sure a conviction. As a matter of expe-
diency, in enforcing the law against a
great corporation, we have continually to
weigh the arguments pro and con as to
whether a prosecution can successfully be
entered into, and as to whether we can be
successful in a criminal action against the
chief individuals in the corporation, and if
not whether we can at least be successful

39

in a civil action against the corporation it-
self. Any effective action on the part of the
Government is always objected to, as a
matter of course, by the wrongdoers, by the
beneficiaries of the wrongdoers, and by
their champions ; and often one of the most
effective ways of attacking the action
of the Government is by objecting to prac-
tical action upon the ground that it does
not go far enough. One of the favorite
devices of those who are really striving to
prevent the enforcement of these laws is

40

to clamor for action of such severity that

it can not be undertaken because it will be
certain to fail if tried. An instance of this
is the demand often made for criminal
prosecutions where such prosecutions
would be certain to fail. We have
found by actual experience that a jury
which will gladly punish a corporation
by fine, for instance, will acquit the in-
dividual members of that corporation if
we proceed against them criminally
because of those very things which the

41

corporation which they direct and con-
trol has done. In a recent case against
the Licorice Trust we indicted and
tried the two corporations and their
respective presidents. The contracts
and other transactions establishing the
guilt of the corporations were made
through, and so far as they were in writ-
ing were signed by, the two presidents.
Yet the jury convicted the two corpora-
tions and acquitted the two men. Both
verdicts could not possibly have been cor-

42

rect ; but apparently the average juryman
wishes to see trusts broken up, and is
quite ready to fine the corporation itself;
but is very reluctant to find the facts
"proven beyond a reasonable doubt"
when it comes to sending to jail a
reputable member of the business com-
munity for doing what the business com-
munity has unhappily grown to recognize
as well-nigh normal in business. More-
over, under the necessary technicalities of
criminal proceedings, often the only man

43

who can be reached criminally will be some

subordinate who is not the real guilty party
at all.

/ Many men of large wealth have been
guilty of conduct which from the moral
standpoint is criminal, and their misdeeds
are to a peculiar degree reprehensible,
because those committing them have no
excuse of want, of poverty, of weakness
and ignorance to offer as partial atone-
ment. / When in addition to moral re-
sponsibility these men have a legal respon-

44

sibility which can be proved so as to im-
press a judge and jury, then the Department
will strain every nerve to reach them crimi-
nally. Where this is impossible, then it
will take whatever action will be most
effective under the actual conditions.

In the last six years we have shown
that there is no individual and no cor-
poration so powerful that he or it stands
above the possibility of punishment under
the law. Our aim is to try to do some-
thing effective; our purpose is to stamp

45
out the evil; we shall seek to find the

most effective device for this purpose ; and
we shall then use it, whether the device
can be found in existing law or must be
supplied by legislation. Moreover, when
we thus take action against the wealth
which works iniquity, we are acting in
the interest of every man of property who
acts decently and fairly by his fellows ; and
we are strengthening the hands of those
who propose fearlessly to defend property
against all unjust attacks. No individual,

46

no corporation, obeying the law has any-
thing to fear from this Administration.
During the present trouble with the
stock market I have, of course, received
countless requests and suggestions, public
and. private, that I should say or do some-
thing to ease the situation, j There is a
world-wide financial disturbance; it is felt
in the bourses of Paris and Berlin; and
British consols are lower than for a gen-
eration, while British railway securities
have also depreciated. On the New

47

York Stock Exchange the disturbance

'fe'

has been peculiarly severe. Most of it I be-
lieve to be due to matters not peculiar to the
United States, and most of the remainder
to matters wholly unconnected with any
governmental action; but it may well be
that the determination of the Government
(in which, gentlemen, it will not waver),
to punish certain malefactors of great
wealth, has been responsible for some-
thing of the trouble ; at least to the extent
of having caused these men to combine to

48

bring about as much financial stress as

possible, in order to discredit the policy
of the Government and thereby secure a
reversal of that policy, so that they may
enjoy unmolested the fruits of their own
evil-doing. That they have misled many
good people into believing that there should
be such reversal of policy is possible. If so
I am sorry; but it will not alter my attitude.
Once for all let me say that so far as I am
concerned, and for the eighteen months of
my Presidency that remain, there will be

49

no change in the policy we have steadily

pursued, no let up in the effort to secure
the honest observance of the law ; for I re-
gard this contest as one to determine who
shall rule this free country — the people
through their governmental agents or a
few ruthless and domineering men, whose
wealth makes them peculiarly formi-
dable, because they hide behind the
breastworks of corporate organization.
I wish there to be no mistake on this
point; it is idle to ask me not to prose-

50

cute criminals, rich or poor. But I desire

no less emphatically to have it under-
stood that we have sanctioned and will
sanction no action of a vindictive
type, and above all no action which
shall inflict great and unmerited suffer-
ing upon innocent stockholders or upon
the public as a whole. Our purpose
is to act with the minimum of
harshness compatible with attaining
our ends. In the man of great wealth
who has earned his wealth honestly and

51

uses it wisely we recognize a good citizen

of the best type, worthy of all praise and
respect. Business can only be done under
modern conditions through corporations,
and our purpose is heartily to favor the
corporations that do well. The Adminis-
tration appreciates that liberal but honest
profits for legitimate promoting, good
salaries, ample salaries, for able and
upright management, and gener-
ous dividends for capital employed
either in founding or continuing

52

wholesome business ventures, are the
factors necessary for successful corporate
activity and therefore for generally pros-
perous business conditions. All these
are compatible with fair dealing as between
man and man and rigid obedience to the
law. Our aim is to help every honest
man, every honest corporation, and our
policy means in its ultimate analysis a
healthy and prosperous expansion of the
business activities of honest business men
and honest corporations.

53

I very earnestly hope that the legisla-
tion which deals with the regulation of
corporations engaged in interstate business
will also deal with the rights and interests
of the wageworkers employed by those
corporations. Action was taken by the
Congress last year limiting the number
of hours that railway employees should
be employed. The law is a good one;
but if in practice it proves necessary
to strengthen it, it must be strengthened.
We have now secured a national em-

54

ployers' liability law; but ultimately a

more far-reachmg and thorough-going
law must be passed. It is monstrous
that a man or woman who is crippled in
an industry, even as the result of taking
what are the necessary risks of the occupa-
tion, should be required to bear the whole
burden of the loss. That burden should
be distributed and not placed solely upon
the weakest individual, the one least able
to carry it. By making the employer
liable the loss will ultimately be dis-

55
tributed among all the beneficiaries of

the business.

I also hope that there will be legisla-
tion increasing the power of the National
Government to deal with certain matters
concerning the health of our people every-
where; the Federal authorities, for instance,
should join with all the State authorities
in warring against the dreadful scourge of
tuberculosis. Your own State govern-
ment, here in Massachusetts, deserves high
praise for the action it has taken in these

56
public health matters during the last few

years; and in this, as in some other mat-
ters, I hope to see the National Govern-
ment stand abreast of the foremost State
governments.

I have spoken of but one or two laws
which, in my judgment, it is advisable to
enact as part of the general scheme for

makingtheinterfcrenceof thcNationalGov-

ernment more effective in securing justice
and fair dealing as between man and man
here in the United States. Let me add,

57
however, that while it is necessary to have

legislation when conditions arise wheie we

can only cope with evils through the

joint action of all of us, yet that we can

never afford to forget that in the last

analysis the all-important factor for each of

us must be his own individual character.

It is a necessary thing to have good laws,

good institutions; but the most necessary

of all things is to have a high quality of

individual citizenship. This does not mean

that we can afford to neglect legislation.

58

It will be highly disastrous if we permit

ourselves to be misled by the pleas of
those who see in an unrestricted individ-
ualism the all-sufficient panacea for social
evils; but it will be even more disastrous
to adopt the opposite panacea of any so-
cialistic system which would destroy all
individualism, which would root out the
fiber of our whole citizenship. In any
great movement, such as that in which we
are engaged, nothing is more necessary
than sanity, than the refusal to be led

59

into extremes by the advocates of the

ultra course on either side. Those pro-
fessed friends of liberty who champion
license are the worst foes of liberty and
tend by the reaction their violence causes
to throw the Government back into
the hands of the men who champion
corruption and tyranny in the name
of order. So it is with this movement
for securing justice toward all men, and
equality of opportunity so far as it can
be secured by governmental action. The

6o

rich man who with hard arrogance de-
clines to consider the rights and the needs
of those who are less well off, and the
poor man who excites or indulges in
envy and hatred of those who are bet-
ter off, are alike alien to the spirit
of our national life. Each of them should
learn to appreciate the baseness and deg-
radation of his point of view, as evil
in the one case as in the other. There
exists no more sordid and unlovely type
of social development than a plutocracy,

6i

for there is a peculiar unwholesomeness

in a social and governmental ideal where
wealth by and of itself is held up as the
greatest good. The materialism of such a
view, whether it finds its expression in the
life of a man who accumulates a vast for-
tune in ways that are repugnant to every
instinct of generosity and of fair dealing,
or whether it finds its expression in the
vapidly useless and self-indulgent life of
the inheritor of that fortune, is contemptible
in the eyes of all men capable of a thrill of

62

lofty feeling. Where the power of the law
can be wisely used to prevent or to mini-
mize the acquisition or business employ-
ment of such wealth and to make it pay
by income or inheritance tax its proper
share of the burden of government, I
would invoke that power without a mo-
ment's hesitation.

But while we can accomplish something
by legislation, legislation can never be
more than a part, and often no more than
a small part, in the general scheme of

63
moral progress; and crude or vindictive

legislation may at any time bring such
progress to a halt. Certain socialistic
leaders propose to redistribute the
world's goods by refusing to thrift and
energy and industry their proper superior-
ity over folly and idleness and sullen envy.
Such legislation would merely, in the
words of the president of Columbia Uni-
versity, "wreck the world's efficiency for
the purpose of redistributing the world's
discontent." We should all of us

64
work heart and soul for the real and per-
manent betterment which will lift our
democratic civilization to a higher level of
safety and usefulness. Such betterment
can come only by the slow, steady growth
of the spirit which metes a generous, but
not a sentimental, justice to each man on
his merits as a man, and which recognizes
the fact that the highest and deepest hap-
piness for the individual lies not in selfish-
ness but in service.

LIBRfiRY OF CONGRESS

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