HAVE FAITH
IN
MASSACHUSETTS
HAVE FAITH
IN
MASSACHUSETTS
A Collection of Speeches and Messages
BY
CALVIN COOLIDGE
Governor of Massachusetts
SECOND EDITION ENLARGED
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Rfarride Prut
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY CALVIN COOUDGB
ALL RIGHTS HSSKRVED
oAt
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
THERE are certain fundamental principles
of sound community life which cannot be
stated too emphatically or too often. Few
public men of to-day have shown a finer
combination of right feeling and clear
thinking about these principles, with a gift
for the pithy expression of them, than has
Governor Calvin Coolidge. It was an ac-
curate phrase that President Meiklejohn
used when, in conferring the degree of
Doctor of Laws on him at Amherst Col-
lege last June, he complimented him on
teaching the lesson of "adequate brevity."
His speeches and messages abound in
evidences of this gift, but in the main the
speeches are not easily accessible. It has
seemed to some of Governor Coolidge's
admirers, as it has to the publishers of
this little volume, that a real public service
vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE
might be rendered by making a careful
selection from the best of the speeches and
issuing them in an attractive and conven-
ient form. With his permission this has
been done, and it is hoped that many
readers will welcome the book in this time
of special need of inspiring and steadying
influences.
It is a time when all men should realize
that, in the words of Governor Coolidge
himself, "Laws must rest on the eternal
foundations of righteousness"; that "In-
dustry, thrift, character are not conferred
by act or resolve. Government cannot re-
lieve from toil." It is a time when we must
"have faith in Massachusetts. We need a
broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people,
— a faith that men desire to do right, that
the Commonwealth is founded upon a right-
eousness which will endure."
THE EDITORS
Boston, September. 1919
NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
IN the issue of a second edition of this
collection of Governor Coolidge's speeches
and messages, the opportunity has been
taken to add a proclamation and three
recently delivered addresses, which bring
the volume practically up to the date of
publication.
Boston, October, 1919
Commontoealtf) of
By His Excellency
CALVIN COOLIDGE
GOVERNOR
A PROCLAMATION
Massachusetts has many glories. The last one she would wish to surrender is
the glory of the men who have served her in war. While such devotion lives the
Commonwealth is secure. Whatever dangers may threaten from within or without
she can view them calmly. Turning to her veterans she can say "These are our
defenders. They are invincible. In them is our safety."
War is the rule of force. Peace is the reign of law. When Massachusetts was
settled the Pilgrims first dedicated themselves to a reign of law. When they set foot
on Plymouth Rock they brought the Mayflower Compact, in which, calling on the
Creator to witness, they agreed with each other to make just laws and render due
submission and obedience. The date of that American document was written November
II, 1620.
After more than five years of the bitterest war in human experience, the last
great stronghold of force, surrendering to the demands of America and her allies,
agreed to cast aside the sword and live under the law. The date of that world
document was written November 11, 1918.
Now, therefore, in grateful commemoration of the unsurpassed deeds of heroism
performed by the service men of Massachusetts, of the sacrifice of her people, sometimes
greater than life itself, of the service rendered by every war charity and organization,
to honor those who bore arms, to recognize those who supported the government, in
accordance with the law of the current year
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1919
is set apart as a holiday for general observance and celebration of the home coming
of Massachusetts soldiers, sailors and marines. In that welcome may we dedicate
ourselves to a continued support of the cause for which they freely offered life, that
there may be wiped away everywhere the burden of injustice and every attempt to
rule by force, and that there may be ushered in a reign of law, that will ease the
weak of their great burdens, and leave the strong, unhampered by the opposition of evil
men, the opportunity to exert their whole energy for the welfare of their fellow men.
Let war and all force end, and peace and all law reign.
GIVEN at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, this twenty-
eighth day of October, in the year of our Lord one
thousand nine hundred and nineteen, and of the Inde-
pendence of the United States of America the one
hundred and forty-fourth.
CALVIN COOLIDGE.
By His Excellency the Governor.
ALBERT P. LANGTRY.
Setrtltry of the Commonwealth.
tfjc Commontoealtfj of
CONTENTS
I. To the State Senate on Being Elected its
President, January 7, 1914 3
II. Amherst College Alumni Association,
Boston, February 4, 1916 10
III. Brockton Chamber of Commerce, April
11, 1916 15
IV. At the Home of Daniel Webster, Marsh-
field, July 4, 1916 21
V. Riverside, August 28, 1916 38
VI. At the Home of Augustus P. Gardner,
Hamilton, September, 1916 42
VII. Lafayette Banquet, Fall River, Septem-
ber 4, 1913 47
VIII. Norfolk Republican Club, Boston, Octo-
ber 9, 1916 51
IX. Public Meeting on the High Cost of Liv-
ing, Faneuil Hall, December 9, 1916 55
X. One Hundredth Anniversary Dinner of
the Provident Institution for Savings,
December 13, 1916 59
XL Associated Industries Dinner, Boston,
December 15, 1916 63
XII. On the Nature of Politics 69
viii CONTENTS
XIII. Tremont Temple, November 3, 1917 85
XIV. Dedication of Town-House, Weston,
November 27, 1917 91
XV. Amherst Alumni Dinner, Springfield,
March 15, 1918 102
XVI. Message for the Boston Post, April
22, 1918 108
XVII. Roxbury Historical Society, Bunker
Hill Day, June 17, 1918 109
XVIII. Fairhaven, July 4, 1918 122
XIX. Somerville Republican City Commit-
tee, August 7, 1918 126
1 XX. Written for the Sunday Advertiser and
American, September 1, 1918 132
XXI. Essex County Club, Lynnfield, Sep.
tember 14, 1918 138
XXII. Tremont Temple, November 2, 1918 148
XXIII. Faneuil Hall, November 4, 1918 158
XXIV. From Inaugural Address as Gover-
nor, January 2, 1919 161
XXV. Statement on the Death of Theodore
Roosevelt 164
XXVI. Lincoln Day Proclamation, January
30, 1919 166
XXVII. Introducing Henry Cabot Lodge and
A. Lawrence Lowell at the Debate
on the League of Nations, Sym-
phony Hall, March 19, 1919 . 169
CONTENTS to
XXVIIL Veto of Salary Increase 171
XXIX. Flag Day Proclamation, May 26,
1919 177
XXX. Ainherst College Commencement,
June 18, 1919 180
XXXI. Harvard University Commence-
ment, June 19, 1919 188
XXXII. Plymouth, Labor Day, September
1, 1919 197
XXXIII. Westfield, September 3, 1919 207
XXXTV. A Proclamation, September 11,
1919 219
XXXV. An Order to the Police Commis-
sioner of Boston, September 11,
1919 221
XXXVL A Telegram to Samuel Gompers,
September 14, 1919 222
XXXVH. A Proclamation, September 24,
1919 225
XXXVIII. Holy Cross College, June 25, 1919 228
XXXIX. Republican State Convention,
Tremont Temple, October 4,
1919 238
XL. Williams College, October 17, 1919 251
XLL Concerning Teachers' Salaries,
October 29, 1919 256
x CONTENTS
XLII. Statement to the Press, Election
Day, November 4, 1919 260
XLIII. Speech at Tremont Temple, Saturday,
November 1, 1919, 8 P.M. 263
HAVE FAITH
IN
MASSACHUSETTS
HAVE FAITH
IN
MASSACHUSETTS
I
TO THE STATE SENATE ON BEING
ELECTED ITS PRESIDENT
JANUABY 7, 1914
HONORABLE SENATORS: — I thank you —
with gratitude for the high honor given,
with appreciation for the solemn obliga-
tions assumed — I thank you.
This Commonwealth is one. We are all
members of one body. The welfare of the
weakest and the welfare of the most power-
ful are inseparably bound together. In-
dustry cannot flourish if labor languish.
Transportation cannot prosper if manu-
factures decline. The general welfare can-
not be provided for in any one act, but it
is well to remember that the benefit of
one is the benefit of all, and the neglect
of one is the neglect of all. The suspension
4 TO THE STATE SENATE
of one man's dividends is the suspension of
another man's pay envelope.
Men do not make laws. They do but dis-
cover them. Laws must be justified by
something more than the will of the major-
ity. They must rest on the eternal founda-
tion of righteousness. That state is most
fortunate in its form of government which
has the aptest instruments for the discovery
of laws. The latest, most modern, and near-
est perfect system that statesmanship has
devised is representative government. Its
weakness is the weakness of us imperfect
human beings who administer it. Its
strength is that even such administration
secures to the people more blessings than
any other system ever produced. No na-
tion has discarded it and retained liberty.
Representative government must be pre-
served.
Courts are established, not to determine
the popularity of a cause, but to adjudi-
cate and enforce rights. No litigant should
ON BEING ELECTED ITS PRESIDENT 5
be required to submit his case to the haz-
ard and expense of a political campaign.
No judge should be required to seek or
receive political rewards. The courts of
Massachusetts are known and honored
wherever men love justice. Let their glory
suffer no diminution at our hands. The
electorate and judiciary cannot combine.
A hearing means a hearing. When the trial
of causes goes outside the court-room,
Anglo-Saxon constitutional government
ends.
The people cannot look to legislation
generally for success. Industry, thrift,
character, are not conferred by act or re-
solve. Government cannot relieve from
toil. It can provide no substitute for the
rewards of service. It can, of course, care
for the defective and recognize distin-
guished merit. The normal must care for
themselves. Self-government means self-
support.
Man is born into the universe with a
6 TO THE STATE SENATE
personality that is his own. He has a right
that is founded upon the constitution of
the universe to have property that is his
own. Ultimately, property rights and per-
sonal rights are the same thing. The one
cannot be preserved if the other be vio-
lated. Each man is entitled to his rights and
the rewards of his service be they never so
large or never so small.
History reveals no civilized people
among whom there were not a highly edu-
cated class, and large aggregations of
wealth, represented usually by the clergy
and the nobility. Inspiration has always
come from above. Diffusion of learning has
come down from the university to the com-
mon school — the kindergarten is last. No
one would now expect to aid the common
school by abolishing higher education.
It may be that the diffusion of wealth
works in an analogous way. As the little
red schoolhouse is builded in the college, it
may be that the fostering and protection
ON BEING ELECTED ITS PRESIDENT 7
of large aggregations of wealth are the only
foundation on which to build the prosper-
ity of the whole people. Large profits
mean large pay rolls. But profits must be
the result of service performed. In no land
are there so many and such large aggrega-
tions of wealth as here; in no land do they
perform larger service; in no land will tke
work of a day bring so large a reward in
material and spiritual welfare.
Have faith in Massachusetts. In some
unimportant detail some other States may
surpass her, but in the general results,
there is no place on earth where the people
secure, in a larger measure, the blessings of
organized government, and nowhere can
those functions more properly be termed
self-government.
Do the day's work. If it be to protect
the rights of the weak, whoever objects,
do it. If it be to help a powerful corpora-
tion better to serve the people, whatever
the opposition, do that. Expect to be
8 TO THE STATE SENATE
called a stand-patter, but don't be a stand-
patter. Expect to be called a demagogue,
but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesitate
to be as revolutionary as science. Don't
hesitate to be as reactionary as the multi-
plication table. Don't expect to build up
the weak by pulling down the strong.
Don't hurry to legislate. Give administra-
tion a chance to catch up with legislation.
We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith
in the people — a faith that men desire to do
right, that the Commonwealth is founded
upon a righteousness which will endure, a
reconstructed faith that the final approval
of the people is given not to demagogues,
slavishly pandering to their selfishness,
merchandising with the clamor of the hour,
but to statesmen, ministering to their wel-
fare, representing their deep, silent, abid-
ing convictions.
Statutes must appeal to more than ma-
terial welfare. Wages won't satisfy, be
they never so large. Nor houses; nor lands;
ON BEING ELECTED ITS PRESIDENT 9
nor coupons, though they fall thick as the
leaves of autumn. Man has a spiritual na-
ture. Touch it, and it must respond as the
magnet responds to the pole. To that, not
to selfishness, let the laws of the Common-
wealth appeal. Recognize the immortal
worth and dignity of man. Let the laws of
Massachusetts proclaim to her humblest
citizen, performing the most menial task,
the recognition of his manhood, the recog-
nition that all men are peers, the humblest
with the most exalted, the recognition that
all work is glorified. Such is the path to
equality before the law. Such is the founda-
tion of liberty under the law. Such is the
sublime revelation of man's relation to
man — Democracy.
10 AMHERST COLLEGE
II
AMHERST COLLEGE ALUMNI ASSOCIA-
TION, BOSTON
FEBRUARY 4, 1916
WE live in an age which questions every-
thing. The past generation was one of reli-
gious criticism. This is one of commercial
criticism.
We have seen the development of great
industries. It has been represented that
some of these have not been free from
blame. In this development some men have
seemed to prosper beyond the measure of
their service, while others have appeared
to be bound to toil beyond their strength
for less than a decent livelihood.
As a result of criticising these conditions
there has grown up a too well-developed
public opinion along two lines; one, that
the men engaged in great affairs are sel-
fish and greedy and not to be trusted,
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION, BOSTON 11
that business activity is not moral and the
whole system is to be condemned; and the
other, that employment, that work, is a
curse to man, and that working hours
ought to be as short as possible or in some
way abolished. After criticism, our reli-
gious faith emerged clearer and stronger
and freed from doubt. So will our business
relations emerge, purified but justified.
The evidence of evolution and the facts
of history tell us of the progress and devel-
opment of man through various steps and
ages, known by various names. We learn
of the stone age, the bronze, and the iron
age. We can see the different steps in the
growth of the forms of government; how
anarchy was put down by the strong arm
of the despot, of the growth of aristoc-
racy, of limited monarchies and of parlia-
ments, and finally democracy.
But in all these changes man took but
one step at a time. Where we can trace
history, no race ever stepped directly from
12 AMHERST COLLEGE
the stone age to the iron age and no nation
ever passed directly from depotism to de-
mocracy. Each advance has been made
only when a previous stage was approach-
ing perfection, even to conditions which
are now sometimes lost arts.
We have reached the age of invention,
of commerce, of great industrial enterprise.
It is often referred to as selfish and ma-
terialistic.
Our economic system has been attacked
from above and from below. But the short
answer lies in the teachings of history. The
hope of a Watt or an Edison lay in the
men who chipped flint to perfection. The
seed of democracy lay in a perfected des-
potism. The hope of to-morrow lies in the
development of the instruments of to-day.
The prospect of advance lies in maintain-
ing those conditions which have stimulated
invention and industry and commerce. The
only road to a more progressive age lies in
perfecting the instrumentalities of this age.
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION, BOSTON 13
The only hope for peace lies in the per-
fection of the arts of war.
"We build the ladder by which we rise
And we mount to the summit round by round."
All growth depends upon activity. Life
is manifest only by action. There is no
development physically or intellectually
without effort, and effort means work.
Work is not a curse, it is the prerogative of
intelligence, the only means to manhood,
and the measure of civilization. Savages
do not work. The growth of a sentiment
that despises work is an appeal from civili-
zation to barbarism.
I would not be understood as making a
sweeping criticism of current legislation
along these lines. I, too, rejoice that an
awakened conscience has outlawed: com-
mercial standards that were false or low
and that an awakened humanity has de-
creed that the working and living condition
14 AMHERST COLLEGE
of our citizens must be worthy of true
manhood and true womanhood.
I agree that the measure of success is
not merchandise but character. But I do
criticise those sentiments, held in all too
respectable quarters, that our economic
system is fundamentally wrong, that com-
merce is only selfishness, and that our citi-
zens, holding the hope of all that America
means, are living in industrial slavery. I
appeal to Amherst men to reiterate and
sustain the Amherst doctrine, that the man
who builds a factory builds a temple, that
the man who works there worships there,
and to each is due, not scorn and blame,
but reverence and praise.
BROCKTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 15
III
BUOCKTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
APRIL 11, 1916
MAN'S nature drives him ever onward. He
is forever seeking development. At one
time it may be by the chase, at another by
warfare, and again by the quiet arts of
peace and commerce, but something within
is ever calling him on to "replenish the
earth and subdue it."
It may be of little importance to deter-
mine at any time just where we are, but it
is of the utmost importance to determine
whither we are going. Set the course aright
and time must bring mankind to the ulti-
mate goal.
We are living in a commercial age. It is
often designated as selfish and materialis-
tic. We are told that everything has been
commercialized. They say it has not been
enough that this spirit should dominate
16 BROCKTON
the marts of trade, it has spread to every
avenue of human endeavor, to our arts,
our sciences and professions, our politics,
our educational institutions and even into
the pulpit; and because of this there are
those who have gone so far in their criti-
cism of commercialism as to advocate the
destruction of all enterprise and the aboli-
tion of all property.
Destructive criticism is always easy be-
cause, despite some campaign oratory,
some of us are not yet perfect. But con-
structive criticism is not so easy. The
faults of commercialism, like many other
faults, lie in the use we make of it. Before
we decide upon a wholesale condemnation
of the most noteworthy spirit of modern
times it would be well to examine carefully
what that spirit has done to advance the
welfare of mankind.
Wherever we can read human history,
the answer is always the same. Where com-
merce has flourished there civilization has
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE 17
increased. It has not sufficed that men
should tend their flocks, and maintain
themselves in comfort on their industry
alone, however great. It is only when
the exchange of products begins that de-
velopment follows. This was the case in
ancient Babylon, whose records of trade
and banking we are just beginning to
read. Their merchandise went by canal and
caravan to the ends of the earth. It was
not the war galleys, but the merchant
vessel of Phoenicia, of Tyre, and Carthage
that brought them civilization and power.
To-day it is not the battle fleet, but the
mercantile marine which in the end will
determine the destiny of nations. The ad-
vance of our own land has been due to
our trade, and the comfort and happi-
ness of our people are dependent on our
general business conditions. It is only a
figure of poetry that "wealth accumulates
and men decay." Where wealth has accu-
mulated, there the arts and sciences have
18 BROCKTON
flourished, there education has been dif-
fused, and of contemplation liberty has
been born. The progress of man has been
measured by his commercial prosperity. I
believe that these considerations are suffi-
cient to justify our business enterprise and
activity, but there are still deeper reasons.
I have intended to indicate not only
that commerce is an instrument of great
power, but that commercial development
is necessary to all human progress. What,
then, of the prevalent criticism? Men have
mistaken the means for the end. It is not
enough for the individual or the nation to
acquire riches. Money will not purchase
character or good government. We are
under the injunction to "replenish the
earth and subdue it," not so much because
of the help a new earth will be to us, as be-
cause by that process man is to find him-
self and thereby realize his highest destiny.
Men must work for more than wages, fac-
tories must turn out more than merchan-
CHAMBER OP COMMERCE 10
disc, or there is naught but black despair
ahead.
If material rewards be the only measure
of success, there is no hope of a peaceful
solution of our social questions, for they
will never be large enough to satisfy. But
such is not the case. Men struggle for ma-
terial success because that is the path, the
process, to the development of character.
We ought to demand economic justice, but
most of all because it is justice. We must
forever realize that material rewards are
limited and in a sense they are only inci-
dental, but the development of character
is unlimited and is the only essential. The
measure of success is not the quantity of
merchandise, but the quality of manhood
which is produced.
These, then, are the justifying concep-
tions of the spirit of our age; that com-
merce is the foundation of human progress
and prosperity and the great artisan of
human character. Let us dismiss the gen-
20 BROCKTON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
eral indictment that has all too long hung
over business enterprise. While we con-
tinue to condemn, unsparingly, selfishness
and greed and all trafficking in the natural
rights of man, let us not forget to respect
thrift and industry and enterprise. Let us
look to the service rather than to the re-
ward. Then shall we see in our industrial
army, from the most exalted captain to
the humblest soldier in the ranks, a pur-
pose worthy to minister to the highest
needs of man and to fulfil the hope of »•
fairer day.
AT HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER 21
IV
AT THE HOME OF DANIEL WEBSTER
MARSHFIELD
JULY 4, 1916
HISTORY is revelation. It is the manifesta-
tion in human affairs of a "power not our-
selves that makes for righteousness." Sav-
ages have no history. It is the mark of
civilization. This New England of ours
slumbered from the dawn of creation until
the beginning of the seventeenth century,
not unpeopled, but with no record of hu-
man events worthy of a name. Different
races came, and lived, and vanished, but
the story of their existence has little more
of interest for us than the story the natural-
ist tells of the animal kingdom, or the geol-
ogist relates of the formation of the crust
of the earth. It takes men of larger vision
and higher inspiration, with a power to im-
part a larger vision and a higher inspira-
22 AT THE HOME OF
tion to the people, to make history. It is
not a negative, but a positive achievement.
It is unconcerned with idolatry or despot-
ism or treason or rebellion or betrayal, but
bows in reverence before Moses or Hamp-
den or Washington or Lincoln or the
Light that shone on Calvary.
July 4, 1776, was a day of history in its
high and true significance. Not because the
underlying principles set out in the Dec-
laration of Independence were new; they
are older than the Christian religion, or
Greek philosophy, nor was it because his-
tory is made by proclamation or declara-
tion; history is made only by action. But
it was an historic day because the repre-
sentatives of three millions of people there
vocalized Concord and Lexington and
Bunker Hill, which gave notice to the
world that they were acting, and proposed
to act, and to found an independent na-
tion, on the theory that "all men are
created equal; that they are endowed
DANIEL WEBSTER, MARSHFIELD 23
by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness." The won-
der and glory of the American people is
not the ringing declaration of that day,
but the action, then already begun, and in
the process of being carried out in spite of
every obstacle that war could interpose,
making the theory of freedom and equality
a reality. We revere that day because it
marks the beginnings of independence,
the beginnings of a constitution that
was finally to give universal freedom and
equality to all American citizens, the be-
ginnings of a government that was to rec-
ognize beyond all others the power and
worth and dignity of man. There began
the first of governments to acknowledge
that it was founded on the sovereignty of
the people. There the world first beheld
the revelation of modern democracy.
Democracy is not a tearing-down; it is
a building-up. It is not a denial of the
24 AT THE HOME OF
divine right of kings; it supplements that
claim with the assertion of the divine right
of all men. It does not destroy; it fulfils. It
is the consummation of all theories of gov-
ernment, to the spirit of which all the na-
tions of the earth must yield. It is the great
constructive force of the ages. It is the
alpha and omega of man's relation to man,
the beginning and the end. There is and
can be no more doubt of the triumph of
democracy in human affairs, than there
is of the triumph of gravitation in the
physical world; the only question is how
and when. Its foundation lays hold upon
eternity.
These are some of the ideals that the
founders of our institutions expressed, in
part unconsciously, on that momentous
day now passed by one hundred and forty
years. They knew that ideals do not main-
tain themselves. They knew that they
there declared a purpose which would be
resisted by the forces, on land and sea, of
DANIEL WEBSTER, MARSHFIELD 25
the mightiest empire of the earth. Without
the resolution of the people of the Colo-
nies to resort to arms, and without the
guiding military genius of Washington, the
Declaration of Independence would be
naught in history but the vision of doc-
trinaires, a mockery of sounding brass
and tinkling cymbal. Let us never forget
that it was that resolution and that genius
which made it the vitalizing force of a great
nation. It takes service and sacrifice to
maintain ideals.
But it is far more than the Declaration
of Independence that brings us here to-day.
That was, indeed, a great document. It was
drawn up by Thomas Jefferson when he
was at his best. It was the product of men
who seemed inspired. No greater company
ever assembled to interpret the voice of the
people or direct the destinies of a nation.
The events of history may have added to it,
but subtracted nothing. Wisdom and ex-
perience have increased the admiration of
26 AT THE HOME OF
it. Time and critcism have not shaken it.
It stands with ordinance and law, charter
and constitution, prophecy and revelation,
whether we read them in the history of
Babylon, the results of Runnymede, the
Ten Commandments, or the Sermon on the
Mount. But, however worthy of our rev-
erence and admiration, however preemi-
nent, it was only one incident of a great
forward movement of the human race, of
which the American Revolution was itself
only a larger incident. It was not so much a
struggle of the Colonies against the tyranny
of bad government, as against wrong prin-
ciples of government, and for self-govern-
ment. It was man realizing himself. It was
sovereignty from within which responded
to the alarm of Paul Revere on that April
night, and which went marching, gun in
hand, against sovereignty from without,
wherever it was found on earth. It only
paused at Concord, or Yorktown, then
marched on to Paris, to London, to Mos-
DANIEL WEBSTER, MARSHFIELD 27
cow, to Pekin. Against it the powers of
privilege and the forces of despotism could
not prevail. Superstition and sham cannot
stand before intelligence and 'reality. The
light that first broke over the thirteen
Colonies lying along the Atlantic Coast
was destined to illuminate theVorld. It has
been a struggle against the forces of dark-
ness; victory has been and is still delayed
in some quarters, but the result is not in
doubt. All the forces of the universe are
ranged on the side of democracy. It must
prevail.
In the train of this idea there has come
to man a long line of collateral blessings.
Freedom has many sides and angles.Human
slavery has been swept away. With security
of personal rights has come security of
property rights. The freedom of the human
mind is recognized in the right of free
speech and free press. The public schools
have made education possible for all, and
ignorance a disgrace. A most significant
28 AT THE HOME OF
development of respect for man has come
to be respect for his occupation. It is not
alone for the learned professions that great
treasures are now poured out. Technical,
trade, and vocational schools for teaching
skill in occupations are fostered and nour-
ished, with the same care as colleges and
universities for the teaching of sciences and
the classics. Democracy not only ennobled
man; it has ennobled industry. In politi-
cal affairs the vote of the humblest has long
counted for as much as the vote of the
most exalted. We are working towards the
day when, in our industrial life, equal
honor shall fall to equal endeavor, whether
it be exhibited in the office or in the shop.
These are some of the results of that
great world movement, which, first exhib-
iting itself in the Continental Congress of
America, carried her arms to victory,
through the sacrifice of a seven years' rev-
olutionary war, and wrote into the Treaty
of Paris the recognition of the right of the
DANIEL WEBSTER, MARSHFIELD 29
people to rule: since which days existence
on this planet has had a new meaning; a
result which, changing the old order of
things, putting the race under the control
and guidance of new forces, rescued man
from every thraldom, but laid on him every
duty.
We know that only ignorance and super-
stition seek to explain events by fate and
destiny, yet there is a fascination in such
speculations born, perhaps, of human
frailty. How happens it that James Otis
laid out in 1762 the then almost treasonable
proposition that "Kings were made for the
good of the people, and not the people for
them," in a pamphlet which was circulated
among the Colonists? What school had
taught Patrick Henry that national out-
look which he expressed in the opening de-
bates of the first Continental Congress when
he said, "I am not a Virginian, but an
American," and which hurried him on to
the later cry of "Liberty or death?" Ho\v
SO AT THE HOME OF
was it that the filling of a vacancy sent
Thomas Jefferson to the second Continental
Congress, there to pen the immortal Dec-
laration we this day celebrate? No other
living man could have excelled him in prep-
aration for, or in the execution of, that
great task. What circumstance put the
young George Washington under the mili-
tary instruction of a former army officer,
and then gave him years of training to lead
the Continental forces? What settled Ethan
Allen in the wilderness of the Green Moun-
tains ready to strike Ticonderoga? Whence
came that power to draft state papers, in a
new and unlettered land, which compelled
the admiration of the cultured Earl of
Chatham? What lengthened out the days
of Benjamin Franklin that he might nego-
tiate the Treaty of Paris? What influence
sent the miraculous voice of Daniel Web-
ster from the outlying settlements of New
Hampshire to rouse the land with his ap-
peal for Liberty and Union? And finally
DANIEL WEBSTER, MARSHFIELD 31
who raised up Lincoln, to lead, to inspire,
and to die, that the opening assertion of the
Declaration might stand at last fulfilled?
These thoughts are overpowering. But let
us beware of fate and destiny. Barbarians
have decreased, but barbarism still exists.
Rome boasted the name of the Eternal
City. It was but eight hundred years from
the sack of the city by one tribe of bar-
barians to the sack of the city by another
tribe of barbarians. Between lay something
akin to a democratic commonwealth. Then
games, and bribes for the populace, with
dictators and Caesars, while later the
Praetorian Guard sold the royal purple to
the highest bidder. After which came
Alaric, the Goth, and night. Since when
democracy lay dormant for some fifteen
centuries. We may claim with reason that
our Nation has had the guidance of Provi-
dence; we may know that our form of
government must ultimately prevail upott
earth; but what guaranty have we that it
32 AT THE HOME OF
shall be maintained here? What proof that
some unlineal hand, some barbarism, with-
out or within, shall not wrench the sceptre
of democracy from our grasp? The rule of
princes, the privilege of birth, has come
down through the ages; the rule of the peo-
ple has not yet marked a century and a
half. There is no absolute proof, no positive
guaranty, but there is hope and high ex-
pectation, and the path is not uncharted.
It may be some help to know that, how-
ever much of glory, there is no magic in
American democracy. Let us examine some
more of this Declaration of ours, and exam-
ine it in the light of the events of those sol-
emn days in which it was adopted.
Men of every clime have lavished much
admiration upon the first part of the Dec-
laration of Independence, and rightly so,
for it marked the entry of new forces and
new ideals into human affairs. Its admirers
have sometimes failed in their attempts to
live by it, but none have successfully dis-
DANIEL WEBSTER, MARSHFIELD 33
puted its truth. It is the realization of the
true glory and worth of man, which, when
once admitted, wrought vast changes that
have marked all history since its day. All
this relates to natural rights, fascinating to
dwell upon, but not sufficient to live by.
The signers knew that well; more impor-
tant still, the people whom they repre-
sented knew it. So they did not stop there.
After asserting that man was to stand out
in the universe with a new and supreme im-
portance, and that governments were in-
stituted to insure life, liberty, and the pur-
suit of happiness, they did not shrink from
the logical conclusion of this doctrine. They
knew that the duty between the citizen
and the State was reciprocal. They knew
that the State called on its citizens for their
property and their lives; they laid down
the proposition that government was to
protect the citizen in his life, liberty, and
pursuit of happiness. At some expense? Yes.
Those prudent and thrifty men had no
34 AT THE HOME OF
false notions about incurring expense. They
knew the value of increasing their material
resources, but they knew that prosperity was
a means, not an end. At cost of life? Yes.
These sons of the Puritans, of the Hugue-
nots, of the men of Londonderry, braved
exile to secure peace, but they were not
afraid to die in defence of their convictions.
They put no limit on what the State must
do for the citizen in his hour of need. While
they required all, they gave all. Let us read
their conclusion in their own words, and
mark its simplicity and majesty: "And for
the support of this Declaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection of Divine Prov-
idence, we mutually pledge to each other
our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred
honor." There is no cringing reservation
here, no alternative, and no delay. Here is
the voice of the plain men of Middlesex,
promising Yorktown, promising Appo-
mattox.
The doctrine of the Declaration of In-
DANIEL WEBSTER, MARSHFIELD 35
dependence, predicated upon the glory of
man, and the corresponding duty of soci-
ety, is that the rights of citizens are to be
protected with every power and resource
of the State, and a government that does
any less is false to the teachings of that
great document, of the name American.
Beyond this, the principle that it is the ob-
ligation of the people to rise and overthrow
government which fails in these respects.
But above all, the call to duty, the pledge
of fortune and of life, nobility of character
through nobility of action: this is Ameri-
canism.
"Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these."
Herein are the teachings of this day —
touching the heights of man's glory and the
depths of man's duty. Here lies the path to
national preservation, and there is no other.
Education, the progress of science, commer-
cial prosperity, yes, and peace, all these and
their accompanying blessings are worthy
and commendable objects of attainment.
36 AT THE HOME OF
But these are not the end, whether these
come or no; the end lies in action — ac-
tion in accord with the eternal principles of
the Declaration of Independence; the words
of the Continental Congress, but the deeds
of the Army of the Revolution.
This is the meaning of America. And it
is all our own. Doctrinaires and vision-
aries may shudder at it. The privilege of
birth may jeer at it. The practical politi-
cian may scoff at it. But the people of the
Nation respond to it, and march away to
Mexico to the rescue of a colored trooper as
they marched of old to the rescue of an
emperor. The assertion of human rights is
naught but a call to human sacrifice. This
is yet the spirit of the American people.
Only so long as this flame burns shall we
endure and the light of liberty be shed over
the nations of the earth. May the increase
of the years increase for America only the
devotion to this spirit, only the intensity of
this flame, and the eternal truth of Low-
ell's lines:
DANIEL WEBSTER, MARSHFIELD 37
What were our lives without thee?
What all our lives to save thee ?
We reck not what we gave thee;
We will not dare to doubt thee,
But ask whatever else and we will dare."
S8 RIVERSIDE
V
RIVERSIDE
AUGUST 28, 1916
IT may be that there would be votes for the
Republican Party in the promise of low
taxes and vanishing expenditures. I can see
an opportunity for its candidates to pose as
the apostles of retrenchment and reform. I
am not one of those who believe votes are
to be won by misrepresentations, skilful
presentations of half truths, and plausible
deductions from false premises. Good gov-
ernment cannot be found on the bargain-
counter. We have seen samples of bargain-
counter government in the past when low
tax rates were secured by increasing the
bonded debt for current expenses or refus-
ing to keep our institutions up to the stand-
ard in repairs, extensions, equipment, and
accommodations. I refuse, and the Repub-
lican Party refuses, to endorse that method
RIVERSIDE 39
of sham and shoddy economy. New proj-
ects can wait, but the commitments of the
Commonwealth must be maintained. We
cannot curtail the usual appropriations or
the care of mothers with dependent chil-
dren or the support of the poor, the insane,
and the infirm. The Democratic programme
of cutting the State tax, by vetoing appro-
priations of the utmost urgency for im-
provements and maintenance costs of in-
stitutions and asylums of the unfortunates
of the State, cannot be the example for a
Republican administration. The result has
been that our institutions are deficient in
resources — even in sleeping accommoda-
tions — and it will take years to restore
them to the old-time Republican efficiency.
Our party will have no part in a scheme of
economy which adds to the misery of the
wards of the Commonwealth — the sick,
the insane, and the unfortunate; those who
are too weak even to protest.
Because I know these conditions I know
40 RIVERSIDE
a Republican administration would face an
increasing State tax rather than not see
them remedied.
The Republican Party lit the fire of prog-
ress in Massachusetts. It has tended it
faithfully. It will not flicker now. It has
provided here conditions of employment,
and safeguards for health, that are surpassed
nowhere on earth. There will be no back-
ward step. The reuniting of the Republican
Party means no reaction in the protection
of women and children in our industrial
life. These laws are settled. These princi-
ples are established. Minor modifications
are possible, but the foundations are not to
be disturbed. The advance may have been
too rapid in some cases, but there can be no
retreat. That is the position of the great
majority of those who constitute our party.
We recognize there is need of relief —
need to our industries, need to our popula-
tion in manufacturing centres; but it must
come from construction, not from destruc-
RIVERSIDE 41
tion. Put an administration on Beacon Hill
that can conserve our resources, that can
protect us from further injuries, until a
national Republican policy can restore
those conditions of confidence and pros-
perity under which our advance began and
under which it can be resumed.
This makes the coming State election
take on a most important aspect — not
that it can furnish all the needed relief, but
that it will increase the probability of a
complete relief in the near future if it be
crowned with Republican victory.
42 AT THE HOME OF
VI
AT THE HOME OF AUGUSTUS P.
GARDNER, HAMILTON
SEPTEMBER, 1916
STANDING here in the presence of our host,
our thoughts naturally turn to a discussion
of " Preparedness." I do not propose to over-
look that issue; but I shall offer suggestions
of another kind of "preparedness." Not
that I shrink from full and free considera-
tion of the military needs of our country.
Nor do I agree that it is now necessary to
remain silent regarding the domestic or
foreign relations of this Nation.
I agree that partisanship should stop at
the boundary line, but I assert that patriot-
ism should begin there. Others, however,
have covered this field, and I leave it to
them and to you.
I do, however, propose to discuss the "pre-
paredness" of the State to care for its un-
AUGUSTUS P. GARDNER, HAMILTON 43
fortunates. And I propose to do this with-
out any party bias and without blame upon
any particular individual, but in just criti-
cism of a system.
In Massachusetts, we are citizens before
we are partisans. The good name of the
Commonwealth is of more moment to us
than party success. But unfortunately, be-
cause of existing conditions, that good name,
in one particular at least, is now in jeopardy.
Massachusetts, for twenty years, has
been able honestly to boast of the care it
has bestowed upon her sick, poor, and in-
sane. Her institutions have been regarded
as models throughout the world. We are
falling from that proud estate; crowded
housing conditions, corridors used for sleep-
ing purposes, are not only not unusual, but
are coming to be the accepted standard.
The heads of asylums complain that main-
tenance and the allowance for food supply
and supervision are being skimped.
On August 1 of this year, the institu-
44 AT THE HOME OF
tions throughout the State housed more
than 700 patients above what they were de-
signed to accommodate, and I am told the
crowding is steadily increasing. That is one
reason I have been at pains to set forth
that I do not see the way clear to make a
radical reduction in the annual State bud-
get. I now repeat that declaration, in spite
of contradiction, because I know the citi-
zens of this State have no desire for econo-
mies gained at such a sacrifice. The people
have no stomach for retrenchment of that
sort.
A charge of overcrowding, which must
mean a lack of care, is not to be carelessly
made. You are entitled to facts, as well as
phrases. I gave the whole number now con-
fined in our institutions above the stated
capacity as over 700. About August 1, Dan-
vers had 1530 in an institution of 1350 ca-
pacity. Northampton, my home town, had
913, in a hospital built for 819. In Boston
State Hospital, there were 1572, where the
AUGUSTUS P. GARDNER, HAMILTON 45
capacity was 1406. Westboro had 1260 in-
mates, with capacity for 1161, and Medfield
had 1615, where the capacity was 1542.
These capacities are given from official re-
corded accommodations.
This was not the practice of the past, and
there can be no question as to where the
responsibility rests. The General Court has
done its best, but there has been a halt
elsewhere. A substantial appropriation was
made for a new State Hospital for the Met-
ropolitan District, and an additional ap-
propriation for a new institution for the
feeble-minded in the western part of the
State. In its desire to hasten matters, the
legislature went even further and granted
money for plans for a new hospital in the
Metropolitan District, to relieve part of the
outside congestion, but the needed relief is
still in the future.
I feel the time has come when the people
must assert themselves and show that they
will tolerate no delay and no parsimony in
46 AUGUSTUS P. GARDNER, HAMILTON
the care of our unfortunates. Restore the
fame of our State in the handling of these
problems to its former lustre.
I repeat that this is not partisan. I am
not criticising individuals. I am denouncing
a system. When you substitute patronage
for patriotism, administration breaks down.
We need more of the Office Desk and less
of the Show Window in politics. Let men
in office substitute the midnight oil for the
limelight. Let Massachusetts return to the
sound business methods which were exem-
plified in the past by such Democrats in the
East as Governor Gaston and Governor
Douglas, and by such Republicans in the
West as Governor Robinson and Governor
Crane.
Above'all, let us not, in our haste to pre-
pare for war, forget to prepare for peace.
The issue is with you. You can, by your
votes, show what system you stamp with
the approval of enlightened Massachusetts
Public Opinion.
LAFAYETTE BANQUET, FALL RIVER 47
VII
LAFAYETTE BANQUET, FALL RIVER
SEPTEMBER 4, 1916
SEEMINGLY trifling events oft carry in
their train great consequences. The firing of
a gun in the backwoods of Pennsylvania,
Macaulay tells us, started the Seven Years'
War which set the world in conflagration,
causing men to fight each other on every
shore ©f the seven seas and giving new mas-
ters to the most ancient of empires. We see
to-day fifteen nations engaged in the most
terrific war in the history of the human
race and trace its origin to the bullet of a
madman fired in the Balkans. It is true
that the flintlock gun at Lexington was not
the first, nor yet the last, to fire a "shot
heard round the world." It was not the
distance it travelled, but the message it
carried which has marked it out above all
other human events. It was the character
48 LAFAYETTE BANQUET, FALL RIVER
of that message which claimed the atten-
tion of him we this day honor, in the far-off
fortress of the now famous Metz; it was
because it roused in the listener a sympa-
thetic response that it was destined to link
forever the events of Concord and Lex-
ington and Bunker Hill and Dorchester
Heights, in our Commonwealth, with the
name of Lafayette.
For there was a new tone in those Massa-
chusetts guns. It was not the old lust of
conquest, not the sullen roar of hatred and
revenge, but a higher, clearer note of a peo-
ple asserting their inalienable sovereignty.
It is a happy circumstance that one of our
native-born, Benjamin Franklin, was in-
strumental in bringing Lafayette to Amer-
ica; but beyond that it is fitting at this
time to give a thought to our Common-
wealth because his ideals, his character, his
life, were all in sympathy with that great
Revolution which was begun within her
borders and carried to a successful con-
LAFAYETTE BANQUET, FALL RIVER 49
elusion by the sacrifice of her treasure and
her blood. It was not the able legal argu-
ment of James Otis against the British
Writs of Assistance, nor the petitions and
remonstrances of the Colonists to the Brit-
ish throne, admirable though they were,
that aroused the approbation and brought
his support to our cause. It was not alone
that he agreed with the convictions of the
Continental Congress. He saw in the exam-
ple of Massachusetts a people who would
shrink from no sacrifice to defend rights
which were beyond price. It was not the
Tories, fleeing to Canada, that attracted
him. It was the patriots, bearing arms,
and he brought them not a pen but a sword.
"Resistance to tyranny is obedience to
law," and "obedience to law is liberty."
Those are the foundations of the Common-
wealth. It was these principles in action
which appealed to that young captain of
dragoons and brought the sword and re-
sources of the aristocrat to battle for de-
50 LAFAYETTE BANQUET, FALL RIVER
mocracy. I love to think of his connection
with our history. I love to think of him at
the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monu-
ment receiving the approbation of the Na-
tion from the lips of Daniel Webster. I love
to think of the long line of American citi-
zens of French blood in our Commonwealth
to-day, ready to defend the principles he
fought for, "Liberty under the [Law," citi-
zens who, like him, look not with apology,
but with respect and approval and admira-
tion on that sentiment inscribed on the
white flag of Massachusetts, "Ense petit
placidam sub libertate quietem" (With a
sword she seeks secure peace under liberty).
NORFOLK REPUBLICAN CLUB, BOSTON 51
VIII
NORFOLK REPUBLICAN CLUB, BOSTON
OCTOBER 9, 1916
LAST night at Somerville I spoke on some
of the fundamental differences between the
Republican and Democratic policies, and
showed how we were dependent on Repub-
lican principles as a foundation on which to
erect any advance in our social and eco-
nomic welfare.
This year the Republican Party has
adopted a very advanced platform. That
was natural, for we have always been the
party of progress, and have given our atten-
tion to that, when we were not engaged in
a life-and-death struggle to overcome the
fallacies put forth by our opponents, with
which we are all so familiar. The result has
been that here in Massachusetts, where
our party has ever been strong, and where
we have framed legislation for more than
52 NORFOLK REPUBLICAN CLUB, BOSTON
fifty years, more progress has been made
along the lines of humanitarian legislation
than in any other State. We have felt free
to call on our industries to make large out-
lays along these lines because we have fur-
nished them with the advantages of a pro-
tective tariff and an honest and efficient
state government. The consequences have
been that in this State the hours and condi-
tions of labor have been better than any-
where else on earth. Those provisions for
safety, sanitation, compensations for acci-
dents, and for good living conditions have
now been almost entirely worked out. There
remains, however, the condition of sickness,
age, misfortune, lack of employment, or
some other cause, that temporarily renders
people unable to care for themselves. Our
platform has taken up this condition.
We have long been familiar with insur-
ance to cover losses. You will readily recall
the different kinds. Formerly it was only
used in commerce, by^the well-to-do. Re*
NORFOLK REPUBLICAN CLUB, BOSTON 53
cently it has been adapted to the use of all
our people by the great industrial com-
panies which have been very successful.
Our State has adopted a system of savings-
bank insurance, thus reducing the expense.
Now, social insurance will not be, under a
Republican interpretation, any new form of
outdoor relief, some new scheme of living
on the town. It will be an extension of the
old familiar principle to the needs at hand,
and so popularized as to meet the require-
ments of our times.
It ought to be understood, however,
that there can be no remedy for lack of in-
dustry and thrift, secured by law. It ought
to be understood that no scheme of insur-
ance and no scheme of government aid is
likely to make us all prosperous. And above
all, these remedies must go forward on the
firm foundation of an independent, self-
supporting, self-governing people. But we
do honestly put forward a proposition for
the relief of misfortune.
54 NORFOLK REPUBLICAN CLUB, BOSTON
The Republican Party is proposing hu-
manitarian legislation to build up character,
to establish independence, not pauperism;
it will in the future, as in the past, ever
stand opposed to the establishment of one
class who shall live on the Government,
and another class who shall pay the taxes.
To those who fear we are turning Socialists,
and to those who think we are withholding
just and desirable public aid and support, I
say that government under the Republican
Party will continue in the future to be so
administered as to breed not mendicants,
but men. Humanitarian legislation is going
to be the handmaid of character.
ON THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 55
IX
PUBLIC MEETING ON THE HIGH COST
OF LIVING, FANEUIL HALL
DECEMBER 9, 1916
THE great aim of American institutions is
the protection of the individual. That is
the principle which lies at the foundation
of Anglo-Saxon liberty. It matters not with
what power the individual is assailed, nor
whether that power is represented by
wealth or place or numbers; against it the
humblest American citizen has the right to
the protection of his Government by every
force that Government can command.
This right would be but half expressed
if it ran only to a remedy after a wrong is
inflicted; it should and does run to the pre-
vention of a wrong which is threatened. We
find our citizens, to-day, not so much suf-
fering from the high cost of living, though
that is grievous enough, as threatened with
£6 ON THE HIGH COST OF LIVING
an increasing cost which will bring suffering
and misery to a large body of our inhab-
itants. So we come here not only to discuss
providing a remedy for what is now exist-
ing, but some protection to ward off what
is threatening to be a worse calamity. We
shall utterly fail of our purpose to provide
relief unless we look at things as they are.
It is useless to indulge in indiscriminate
abuse. We must not confuse the innocent
with the guilty; it must be our object to
allay suspicion, not to create it. The great
body of our tradespeople are honest and
conscientious, anxious to serve their cus-
tomers for a fair return for their service. We
want their cooperation in our pursuit of
facts; we want to cooperate with them in
proposing and securing a remedy. We do
not deny the existence of economic laws,
nor the right to profit by a change of con-
ditions.
But we do claim the right and duty of
the Government to investigate and punish
ON THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 57
any artificial creation of high prices by
means of illegal monopolies or restraints of
trade. And above all, we claim the right of
publicity. That is a remedy with an arm
longer and stronger than that of the law.
Let us know what is going on and the rem-
edy will provide itself. In working along
this line we shall have great help from the
newspapers. The American people are pre-
pared to meet any reasonable burden; they
are not asking for charity or favor; fair
prices and fair profits they will gladly pay;
but they demand information that they are
fair, and an immediate reduction if they
are not.
The Commonwealth has just provided
money for an investigation by a competent
commission. Its Police Department, its
Law Department, are also at the service
of our citizens. Let us refrain from suspi-
cion; let us refrain from all indiscriminate
bJame; but let us present at once to the
proper authorities all facts and all evidence
58 ON THE HIGH COST OF LIVING
of unfair practices. Let all our merchants,
of whatever degree, assist in this work for
the public good and let the individual see
and feel that all his rights are protected by
his Government.
THE PROVIDENT INSTITUTION
X
ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY DIN-
NER OF THE PROVIDENT INSTITUTION
FOR SAVINGS
DECEMBER 13, 1916
THE history of the institution we here cele-
brate reaches back more than one third of
the way to the landing of the Mayflower
— back to the day of the men who signed
the Declaration of Independence, who saw
Prescott, Pomeroy, Stark, and Warren at
Bunker Hill, who followed Washington and
his generals from Dochester Heights to
Yorktown, and saw the old Bay Colony
become the Commonwealth of Massachu-
setts. They had seen a nation in the making.
They founded their government on the
rights of the individual. They had no hesi-
tation in defending those rights against the
invasion of a British King and Parliament,
60 THE PROVIDENT INSTITUTION
by a Revolutionary War, nor in criticis-
ing their own Government at Washington
when they thought an invasion of those
rights was again threatened by the prelim-
inaries and the prosecution of the War of
1812. They had made the Commonwealth.
They understood its Government. They
knew it was a part of themselves, their
own organization. They had not acquired
the state of mind that enabled them to
stand aloof and regard government as
something apart and separate from the
people. It would never have occurred to
them that they could not transact for them-
selves any other business just as well as
they could transact for themselves the
business of government. They were the
men who had fought a war to limit the
power of government and enlarge the priv-
ileges of the individual.
It was the same spirit that made Massa-
chusetts that made the Provident Institu-
tion for Savings. What the men of that day
FOR SAVINGS 61
wanted they made for themselves. They
would never have thought of asking Con-
gress to keep their money in the post-office.
They did not want their commercial privi-
leges interfered with by having the Govern-
ment buy and sell for them. They had the
self-reliance and the independence to prefer
to do those things for themselves. This is
the spirit that founded Massachusetts, the
spirit that has seen your bank grow until it
could now probably purchase all there was
of property in the Commonwealth when it
began its existence. I want to see that spirit
still preeminent here. I want to see a deeper
realization on the part of the people that
this is their Commonwealth, their Govern-
ment; that they control it, that they pay its
expenses, that it is, after all, only a part of
themselves; that any attempt to shift upon
it their duties, their responsibilities, or their
support will in the end only delude, de-
grade, impoverish, and enslave. Your in-
stitution points the only way, through
62 THE PROVIDENT INSTITUTION
self-control, self-denial, and self-support,
to self-government, to independence, to a
more generous liberty, and to a firmer es-
tablishment of individual rights.
ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES DINNER 63
XI
ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES DINNER
BOSTON
DECEMBER 15, 1916
DURING the past few years we have ques-
tioned the soundness of many principles
that had for a long time been taken for
granted. We have examined the founda-
tions of our institutions of government. We
have debated again the theories of the men
who wrote the Declaration of Independence,
the Constitution of the Nation, and laid
down the fundamental law of our own Com-
monwealth. Along with this examination of
our form of government has gone an exami-
nation of our social, industrial, and econo-
mic system. What is to come out of it all?
In the last fifty years we have had a ma-
terial prosperity in this country the like
of which was never beheld before. A pros-
perity which not only built up great indus-
64 ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES DINNER
tries, great transportation systems, great
banks and a great commerce, but a pros-
perity under whose influence arts and sci-
ences, education and charity flourished
most abundantly. It was little wonder that
men came to think that prosperity was the
chief end of man and grew arrogant in the
use of its power. It was little wonder that
such a misunderstanding arose that one
part of the community thought the owners
and managers of our great industries were
robbers, or that they thought some of the
people meant to confiscate all property. It
has been a costly investigation, but if we
can arrive at a better understanding of our
economic and social laws it will be worth
all it cost.
As a part of this discussion we have had
many attempts at regulation of industrial
activity by law. Some of it has proceeded
on the theory that if those who enjoyed
material prosperity used it for wrong pur-
poses, such prosperity should be limited or
ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES DINNER 65
abolished. That is as sound as it would be
to abolish writing to prevent forgery. We
need to keep forever in mind that guilt is
personal; if there is to be punishment let it
fall on the evil-doer, let us not condemn the
instrument. We need power. Is the steam
engine too strong? Is electricity too swift?
Can any prosperity be too great? Can any
instrument of commerce or industry ever
be too powerful to serve the public needs?
What then of the anti-trust laws? They are
sound in theory. Their assemblances of
wealth are broken up because they were as-
sembled for an unlawful purpose. It is the
purpose that is condemned. You men who
represent our industries can see that there
is the same right to disperse unlawful as-
sembling of wealth or power that there is to
disperse a mob that has met to lynch or
riot. But that principle does not denounce
town-meetings or prayer-meetings.
We have established here a democracy on
the principle that all men are created equal.
66 ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES DINNER
It is our endeavor to extend equal blessings
to all. It can be done approximately if we
establish the correct standards. We are
coming to see that we are dependent upon
commercial and industrial prosperity, not
only for the creation of wealth, but for the
solving of the great problem of the distri^
bution of wealth. There is just one cbndi*
tion on which men can secure employment
and a living, nourishing, profitable wage,
for whatever they contribute to the enter-
prise, be it labor or capital, and that condi-
tion is that some one make a profit by it
That is the sound basis for the distribution
of wealth and the only one. It cannot be
done by law, it cannot be done by public
ownership, it* cannot be done by socialism.
When you deny the right to a profit you
deny the right of a reward to thrift and in-
dustry.
The scientists tell us that the same force
that rounds the teardrop moulds the earth.
Physical laws have their analogy in social
ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES DINNER 67
and industrial life. The law that builds up
the people is the law that builds up indus-
try. What price could the millions, who
have found the inestimable blessings of
American citizenship around our great in-
dustrial centres, after coming here from
lands of oppression, afford to pay to those
who organized those industries? Shall we
not recognize the great service they have
done the cause of humanity? Have we not
seen what happens to industry, to trans-
portation, to all commercial activity which
we call business when profit fails? Have we
not seen the suffering and misery which it
entails upon the people?
Let us recognize the source of these fun-
damental principles and not hesitate to as-
sert them. Let us frown upon greed and self-
ishness, but let us also condemn envy and
uncharitableness. Let us have done with
misunderstandings, let us strive to realize
the dream of democracy by a prosperity
of industry that shall mean the prosper-
68 ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES DINNER
ity of the people, by a strengthening of
our material resources that shall mean a
strengthening of our character, by a mer-
chandising that has for its end manhood,
and womanhood, the ideal of American
Citizenship.
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS 69
XII
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS
POLITICS is not an end, but a means. It is
not a product, but a process. It is the art
of government. Like other values it has its
counterfeits. So much emphasis has been
put upon the false that the significance of
the true has been obscured and politics
has come to convey the meaning of crafty
and cunning selfishness, instead of candid
and sincere service. The Greek derivation
shows the nobler purpose. Politikos means
city-rearing, state-craft. And when we re-
member that city also meant civilization,
the spurious presentment, mean and sordid,
drops away and the real figure of the poli-
tician, dignified and honorable, a minister
to civilization, author and finisher of gov-
ernment, is revealed in its true and digni-
fied proportions.
There is always something about genius
70 ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS
that is indefinable, mysterious, perhaps to
its possessor most of all. It has been the
product of rude surroundings no less than
of the most cultured environment, want
.and neglect have sometimes nourished it,
.abundance and care have failed to produce
it. Why some succeed in public life and
'Others fail would be as difficult to tell as
why some succeed or fail in other activi-
ties. Very few men in America have started
out with any fixed idea of entering public
life, fewer still would admit having such an
idea. It was said of Chief Justice Waite,
•of the United States Supreme Court, being
asked when a youth what he proposed to
do when a man, he replied, he had not
yet decided whether to be President or
Chief Justice. This may be in part due to a
.general profession of holding to the princi-
ple of Benjamin Franklin that office should
neither be sought nor refused and in part to
the American idea that the people choose
their own officers so that public service is
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS 71
not optional. In other countries this is not
so. For centuries some seats in the British
Parliament were controlled and probably
sold as were commissions in the army, but
that has never been the case here. A certain
Congressman, however, on arriving at
Washington was asked by an old friend
how he happened to be elected. He replied
that he was not elected, but appointed. It is
worth while noting 'that the boss who was
then supposed to hold the power of appoint-
ment in that district has since been driven
from power, but the Congressman, though
he was defeated when his party was lately
divided, has been reflected. All of which
suggests that the boss did not appoint in
the first instance, but was merely well
enough informed to see what the people
wanted before they had formulated their
own opinions and desires. It was said of
McKinley that he could tell what Congress
would do on a certain measure before the
men in Congress themselves knew what
72 ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS
their decision was to be. Cannon has said of
McKinley that his ear was so close to the
ground that it was full of grasshoppers. But
the fact remains that office brokerage is
here held in reprehensive scorn and pro-
fessional office-seeking in contempt. Every
native-born American, however, is poten-
tially a President, and it must always be re-
membered that the obligation to serve the
State is forever binding upon all, although
office is the gift of the people.
Of course these considerations relate not
to appointive places like the Judiciary,
Commissionerships, clerical positions and
like places, but to the more important elec-
tive offices. Another reason why political
life of this nature is not chosen as a career
is that it does not pay. Nearly all offices of
this class are held at a financial sacrifice,
not merely that the holder could earn more
at some other occupation, but that the sal-
ary of the office does not maintain the
holder of the office. It is but recently that
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS 73
Parliament has paid a salary to its members.
In years gone by the United States Senate
has been rather marked for its number of
rich men. Few prominent members of Con-
gress are dependent on their salary, which
is but another way of saying that in Wash-
ington Senators and Representatives need
more than their official salaries to become
most effective. It is a consolation to be
able to state that this is not the condition
of members of the Massachusetts General
Court. There, ability and character come
very near to being the sole requirements
for success. Although some men have seen
service in our legislature of nearly twenty
years, to the great benefit of the Common-
wealth, no^ one would choose that for a
career and these men doubtless look on it
only as an avocation.
For these reasons we have no profession
of politics or of public life in the sense that
we have a profession of law and medicine
and other learned callings. We have men
74 ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS
who have spent many years in office, but it
would be difficult to find one outside the
limitations noted who would refer to that
.as his business, occupation, or profession.^
The inexperienced are prone to hold an
erroneous idea of public life and its methods.
Not long ago I listened to a joint debate in
& prominent preparatory school. Each side
took it for granted that public men were
influenced only by improper motives and
that officials of the government were seek-
ing only their own gain and advantage with-
out regard to the welfare of the people.
Such a presumption has no foundation in
fact. There are dishonest men in public
•office. There are quacks, shysters, and
charlatans among doctors, lawyers, and
clergy, but they are not representative of
their professions nor indicative of their
methods. Our public men, as a class, are
inspired by honorable and patriotic motives,
•desirous only of a faithful execution of their
trust from the executive and legislative
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS 75
branches of the States and Nation down to*
the executives of our towns, who bear the
dignified and significant title of selectmen.
Public men must expect criticism and be
prepared to endure false charges from their
opponents. It is a matter of no great con-
cern to them. But public confidence in
government is a matter of great concern. It
cannot be maintained in the face of such
opinions as I have mentioned. It is neces-
sary to differentiate between partisan as-
sertions and actual conditions. It is neces-
sary to recognize worth as well as to con-
demn graft. No system of government can
stand that lacks public confidence and no-
progress can be made on the assumption of
a false premise. Public administration is
honest and sound and public business is
transacted on a higher plane than private
business.
There is no difficulty for men in college
to understand elections and government.
They have all had experience in it. The
76 ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS
same motives that operate in the choice
of class officers operate in choosing officers
for the Commonwealth. Here men are soon
estimated at their true worth. Here places
of trust are conferred and administered as
they will be in later years. The scale is
smaller, the opportunities are less, condi-
tions are more artificial, but the principles
are the same. Of course the present esti-
mate is not the ultimate. There are men
here who appear important that will not
appear so in years to come. There are men
who seem insignificant now who will de-
velop at a later day. But the motive which
leads to elections here leads to elections in
the State.
Is there any especial obligation on the
part of college-bred men to be candidates
for public office? I do not think so. It is
said that although college graduates con-
stitute but one per cent of the population,
they hold about fifty per cent of the public
offices, so that this question seems to take
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS 77
care of itself. But I do not feel that there is
any more obligation to run for office than
there is to become a banker, a merchant, a
teacher, or enter any other special occupa-
tion. As* indicated some men have a par-
ticular aptitude in this direction and some
have none. Of course experience counts
here as in any other human activity, and
all experience worth the name is the result
of application, of time and thought and
study and practice. If the individual finds
he has liking and capacity for this work, he
will involuntarily find himself engaged in it.
There is no catalogue of such capacity. One
man gets results in one way, another in
another. But in general only the man of
broad sympathy and deep understanding
of his fellow men can meet with much
success.
What I have said relates to the some-
what narrow field of office-holding. This is
really a small part of the American system
or of any system. James Bryce tells us that
78 ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS
we have a government of public opinion.
That is growing to be more and more true
of the governments of the entire world. The
first care of despotism seems to be to con-
trol the school and the press. Where the
mind is free it turns not to force but to
reason for the source of authority. Men sub-
mit to a government of force as we are doing
now when they believe it is necessary for
their security, necessary to protect them
from the imposition of force from without.
This is probably the main motive of the
German people. They have been taught
that their only protection lay in the support
of a military despotism. Rightly or wrongly
they have believed this and believing have
submitted to what they suppose their only
means of security. They have been governed
accordingly. Germany is still feudal.
This leads to the larger and all important
field of politics. Here we soon see that office-
holding is the incidental, but the standard
of citizenship is the essential. Government
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS 79
does rest upon the opinions of men. Its
results rest on their actions. This makes
every man a politician whether he will or
no. This lays the burden on us all. Men who
have had the advantages of liberal culture
ought to be the leaders in maintaining the
standards of citizenship. Unless they can
and do accomplish this result education is
a failure. Greatly have they been taught,
greatly must they teach. The power to
think is the most practical thing in the
world. It is not and cannot be cloistered
from politics.
We live under a republican form of gov-
ernment. We need forever to remember
that representative government does rep-
resent. A careless, indifferent representa-
tive is the result of a careless, indifferent
electorate. The people who start to elect a
man to get what he can for his district will
probably find they have elected a man who
will get what he can for himself. A body
will keep on its course for a time after the
&0 ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS
moving impulse ceases by reason of its mo-
mentum. The men who founded our govern-
ment had fought and thought mightily on
the relationship of man to his government.
Our institutions would go for a time under
the momentum they gave. But we should
be deluded if we supposed they can be
maintained without more of the same stern
sacrifice offered in perpetuity. Govern-
ment is not an edifice that the founders
turn over to posterity all completed. It is an
institution, like a university which fails un-
less the process of education continues.
The State is not founded on selfishness.
It cannot maintain itself by the offer of
material rewards. It is the opportunity for
service. There has of late been held out the
hope that government could by legislation
remove from the individual the need of
effort. The managers of industries have
seemed to think that their difficulties could
be removed and prosperity ensured by
changing the laws. The employee has been
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS 81
led to believe that his condition could be
made easy by the same method. When in-
dustries can be carried on without any
struggle, their results will be worthless, and
when wages can be secured without any
effort they will have no purchasing value.
In the end the value of the product will
be measured by the amount of effort nec-
essary to secure it. Our late Dr. Garman
recognized this limitation in one of his lec-
ures where he says : —
"Critics have noticed three stages in the
development of human civilization. First:
the let-alone policy; every man to look out
for number one. This is the age of selfish-
ness. Second: the opposite pole of thinking;
every man to do somebody's else work for
him. This is the dry rot of sentimentality
that feeds tramps and enacts poor laws
such as excite the indignation of Herbert
Spencer. But the third stage is represented
by our formula: every man must render
and receive the best possible service, ex-
82 ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS
cept in the case of inequality, and there the
strong must help the weak to help them-
selves; only on this condition is help given.
This is the true interpretation of the life of
Christ. On the first basis He would have
remained in heaven and let the earth take
care of itself. On the second basis He would
have come to earth with his hands full of
gold and silver treasures satisfying every
want that unfortunate humanity could
have devised. But on the third basis He
comes to earth in the form of a servant who
is at the same time a master commanding
his disciples to take up their cross and fol-
low Him; it is sovereignty through service
as opposed to slavery through service. He
refuses to make the world wealthy, but
He offers to help them make themselves
wealthy with true riches which shall be a
hundred-fold more, even in this life, than
that which was offered them by any former
system."
This applies to political life no less than
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS 83
to industrial life. We live under the fairest
government on earth. But it is not self-sus-
taining. Nor is that all. There are selfish-
ness and injustice and evil in the world.
More than that, these forces are never at
rest. Some desire to use the processes of
government for their own ends. Some de-
sire to destroy the authority of government
altogether. Our institutions are predica-
ted on the rights and the corresponding
duties, on the worth, of the individual. It
is to him that we must look for safety.
We may need new charters, new consti-
tutions and new laws at times. We must
always have an alert and interested citizen-
ship. We have no dependence but the indi-
vidual. New charters cannot save us. They
may appear to help but the chances are
that the beneficial results obtained result
from an increased interest aroused by dis-
cussing changes. Laws do not make reforms,
reforms make laws. We cannot look to gov-
ernment. We must look to ourselves. We
84 ON THE NATURE OF POLITICS
must stand not in the expectation of a re-
ward but with a desire to serve. There will
come out of government exactly what is
put into it. Society gets about what it de-
serves. It is the part of educated men to
know and recognize these principles and in-
fluences and knowing them to inform and
warn their fellow countrymen. Politics is
the process of action in public affairs. It is
personal, it is individual, and nothing more.
Destiny is in you.
TREMONT TEMPLE 85
XIII
TREMONT TEMPLE
NOVEMBER 3, 1917
THERE is a time and place for everything.
There are times when some things are out
of place. Domestic science is an important
subject. So is the proper heating and venti-
lating of our habitations. But when the
house is on fire reasonable men do not stop
to argue of culinary cuts nor listen to a dis-
quisition on plumbing; they call out the
fire department and join it in an attempt to
save their dwelling. They think only in
terms of the conflagration.
So it is in this hour that has come to us so
grim with destiny. We cannot stop now to
discuss domestic party politics. Our men
are on the firing-line of France. There will
be no party designations in the casualty
lists. We cannot stop to glance at that al-
luring field of history that tells us of the
86 TREMONT TEMPLE
past patriotic devotion of the men of our
party to the cause of the Nation — devo-
tion without reserve. We must think now
onlyjin terms of winning the war.
An election at this time is not of our
choosing. We are having one because it is
necessary under the terms of our Constitu-
tion of Massachusetts. We have not con-
ducted the ordinary party canvass. We
have not flaunted party banners, we have
not burned red fire, we have not rent the
air with martial music, we have not held
the usual party rallies. We have addressed
meetings, but such addresses have been to
urge subscriptions to the Liberty Loan, to
urge gifts to the great humanitarian work
of the Red Cross, and for the efforts of
charity, benevolence, and mercy that are
represented by the Y.M.C.A. and by the
Knights of Columbus, for the conservation
of food, and for the other patriotic purposes.
But we are not to infer that this is not an
important election. It is too important to
TREMONT TEMPLE 87
think of candidates, too important to think
of party, too important to think of any-
thing but our country at war. No more im-
portant election has been held since the
days of War Governor Andrew. On Tues-
day next the voters of Massachusetts will
decide whether they will support the Gov-
ernment in its defence of America, and its
defence of all that America means. There
is no room for domestic party issues here.
The only question for consideration is
whether the Government of this Common-
wealth, legislative and executive, has ren-
dered and will render prompt and efficient
support for the national defence. Perhaps
it would be enough to point out that Massa-
chusetts troops were first at the Mexican
border and first in France. But that is only
part of the story.
Wars are waged now with far more than
merely the troops in the field. Every re-
source of the people goes into the battle. It
is a matter of organizing the entire fabric
88 TREMONT TEMPLE
of society. No one has yet pointed out, ne
one can point out, any failure on the part
of our State Government to take efficient
measures for this purpose. More than that,
Massachusetts did not have to be asked;
while Washington was yet dumb Massa-
chusetts spoke.
Months before war was declared a Public
Safety Committee was appointed and went
to work; weeks before war a conference of
New England Governors was called and a
million dollars was given the Governor and
Council to equip Massachusetts troops for
which the National Treasury had no money.
By reason of this foresight our men went
forth better supplied than any others, with
ten dollars additional pay from their home
State, and the assurance that their depend-
ents could draw forty dollars monthly
where needed for their support. The pro-
duction and distribution of food and fuel
have been advanced. The maintenance of
industrial peace has been promoted. The
TREMONT TEMPLE 89
Gloucester fishermen, fifteen thousand
shoemakers in Lynn, the Boston & Maine
railroad employees, have had their differ-
ences adjusted. A second million dollars
for emergency expenses has been given the
Governor and Council. An efficient State
Guard of over ten thousand men has been
organized. Our brave soldiers, their depend-
ents, the great patriotic public have been
protected by the present Government with
every means that ingenuity could devise.
We have won the right to reelection by
duty well performed.
Remember this: we are not responsible
for the war, we are responsible for the prep-
aration that enables us to defend our sol-
diers and ourselves from savages. Mas-
sachusetts is not going to repudiate these
patriotic services. To do so now would mean
more than repudiating the Government. It
would mean repudiating the devotion of
our brave men in arms, repudiating the
sacrifice of the fathers, mothers, wives, and
90 TREMONT TEMPLE
dear ones behind, and repudiating the loy-
alty of the millions who subscribed to the
Liberty Loan, — it would mean repudiating
America.
Massachusetts has decided that the path
of the Mayflower shall not be closed. She
has decided to sail the seas. She has decided
to sail not under the edict of Potsdam,
crimped in narrow lanes seeking safety in
unarmed merchantmen painted in fantas-
tic hues, as the badge of an infamous serv-
itude, but she has decided to sail under
the ancient Declaration of Independence,
choosing what course she will, maintaining
security by the guns of ships of the line,
flying at the mast the Stars and Stripes,
forever the emblem of a militant liberty.
TOWN-HOUSE, WESTON 91
XIV
DEDICATION OF TOWN-HOUSE, WESTON
NOVEMBER 27, 1917
I WAS interested to come out here and take
part in the dedication of this beautiful
building in part because my ancestors had
lived in this locality in times gone past, but
more especially because I am interested in
the town governments of Massachusetts.
You have heard the town-meeting referred
to this evening. It seemed to me that the
towns in this Commonwealth correspond in
part to what we might call the water-tight
compartments of the ship of state, and
while sometimes our State Government has
wavered, sometimes it has been suspended,
and it has been thought that the people
could not care for themselves under those
conditions. Whenever that has arisen the
towns of the Commonwealth have come to
the rescue and been able to furnish the f oun-
92 DEDICATION OF
dation and the strength on which might
not only be carried on, but on which might
again be erected the failing government of
the Commonwealth or the failing govern-
ment of the Nation. So that I know nothing
to which we New Englanders owe more, and
^specially the people of Massachusetts, of
Mir civil liberties than we do to our form
of town government.
The history of Weston has been long and
interesting, beginning, as your town seal
designates, back in 1630, when Watertown
was recognized as one of the three or four
towns in the Commonwealth; set off by
boundaries into the Farmers' Precinct in
1698, and becoming incorporated as a town
in 1713. There begins a long and hon-
orable history. Of course, the first part of
it gathered to a large degree around the
church. The first church was started here,
I think, in 1695, and I believe that the land
on which it was to be erected was purchased
of a man who bore my name. Your first
TOWN-HOUSE, WESTON 93
clergyman seems to have been settled about
1702; and the long and even tenor of your
ways here and your devotion to things which
were established is perhaps shown and ex-
emplified in the fact that during the next
one hundred and seventy-four years, com-
ing clear down to 1876, you had but six
clergymen presiding over that church. You
have an example here now, along the same
line, in the long tenure of office that has
come to your present town clerk, he hav-
ing been first elected, I believe, in 1864 and
having held office from that time to this,
probably serving as long, if not longer, than
any of the town clerks of Massachusetts,
certainly, I believe, the longest of any pres-
ent living town clerk.
There are many interesting things con-
nected with the history of this town. It
bore its part in the Indian Wars. Here was
organized an Indian fighting expedition
that went to the North, and, though some of
the men in that_expedition were lost and the
94 DEDICATION OF
expedition was not altogether successful, it
showed the spirit, the resolution, the brav-
ery, and the courage which animated the
men of those days.
Mr. Young has referred to that day in
Massachusetts history that we are all so
proud of, the Nineteenth of April, 1775.
But you had an interesting event here in
this town leading up to that great day.
General Gage was in command of the Brit-
ish forces at Boston. There had been gath-
ered supplies for carrying on a war out
here through Middlesex County and out to
the west in Worcester. History tells us that
he sent out here Sergeant Howe and other
spies, in order that he might find out what
the conditions were and whether it would
be easy for the British troops to come out
here and seize those supplies and break
what they thought was the idea on the part
of the colonists of starting a rebellion. Ser-
geant Howe came out here, went to the
hotel, where, of course, the landlord re-
TOWN-HOUSE, WESTON 95
ceived him hospitably, but informed him
that probably it wouldn't be a healthy
place for him to stay for a very long time,
and sent him away in the dead of the night.
He went back to Boston and made a report
to the General in which he said that the peo-
ple of this vicinity were generally resolved
to be free or to die. That was the spirit of
those times; and he advised the Britishers
that if they wanted to go out to Worcester
they would probably need an expedition of
ten thousand men and a sufficient train of
artillery, and he doubted whether, if such an
expedition as that were sent out, any part
of it would return alive. On account of the
report that he brought back it was deter-
mined by the British authorities that it was
more prudent to go up to Concord than it
was to come out here on the way to Worces-
ter. That was the reason that the expedi-
tion on that Nineteenth of April was started
for Concord rather than through here for
Worcester.
96 DEDICATION OF
Of course, there are many other interest-
ing events in the history of this town. You
had here many men who have seen military
service. You furnished a large number for
the Revolutionary War and a large amount
of money. You furnished as your quota one
hundred and twenty-six soldiers that went
into the army from 1861 to 1865. But you
were doing here what they were doing all
over the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
I doubt if the leading and prominent and
decisive part that Massachusetts played
in the great Revolutionary War is gen-
erally understood. It is interesting to re-
call that when General Washington came
here he seems to have come with somewhat
of a prejudice against New England men. I
think there are extant letters which he wrote
at that time rather reflecting upon what the
New England men were doing and the char-
acter of Massachusetts men of those days.
But that was not his idea at the end of the
war. Then, although he had been brought
TOWN-HOUSE, WESTON 97
up far to the south, he had a different idea.
Then he said, and said very generously,
that he thought well of New England men
and had it not been for their support, had
it not been for the men, the materials and
munitions that they supplied to the Revo-
lutionary forces, the war would not have
been a success. His name is interestingly
connected with your town of Weston.
You have had here not only an interest-
ing population but an interesting location.
It was through this town that the great
arteries of travel ran to the west and south
and to the north. When Burgoyne surren-
dered, some of his troops were brought
through this town on their way to the sea-
coast. When Washington came up to visit
New England after he had been President,
he came through the town of Weston, and
I do not know whether this is any reflec-
tion on the cooking of those days hi the
towns to the west, but it says in the history
of the town of Weston that at one time
98 DEDICATION OF
when Washington stopped at the hotel in
Wayland, although the hostess had pro-
vided what she thought was a very fine
banquet, he left his staff to eat that and
went out into the kitchen to help himself
to a bowl of bread and milk. I suppose he
would not be thought to have done that
because he was a candidate for office and
wanted to appear as one of the plain people,
because that was after he had served in the
office of President. But he stopped here in
the town of Weston and was entertained
here at the hotel. And many other great
men passed through here and were enter-
tained here from the time when we were
, colonies clear up to the time when the rail-
roads were established along in the middle
of the last century.
So this town has had a long and inter-
esting history, and has done its part in
building up Massachusetts and giving her
strength to take her part in the history of
this great Nation. And it is pleasant to see
TOWN-HOUSE, WESTON 99
how the work that the fathers have done
before us is bearing fruit in these times of
ours. It is interesting to see this beautiful
building. It is interesting to know that you
have a town planning committee who are
placing this building in a situation where it
will contribute to the physical beauty of
this historic town. We have not given the
time and the attention and the thought
that we should have given to things of that
kind in Massachusetts. We have been too
utilitarian. We have thought that if a build-
ing was located in some place where we
could have access to it, where it could be
used, where it could transact the business
of the town, that was enough. We are com-
ing to see in these modern days that that is
not enough; that we need not only utilita-
rian motives, but that we need to give some
time, some thought and attention to the
artistic in life; that we need to concern our-
selves not only with the material but give
some thought to the spiritual; that we need
100 DEDICATION OF
to pay some attention to the beautiful as
well as to that which is merely useful.
These things are appreciated. Weston
is doing something along these lines and
building her public buildings and laying
out her public square or her common (as
it was known in the old days) so they
will be things of beauty as well as things
of use. Let us dedicate this building to
these new purposes. Let us dedicate it to
the glorious history of the past. Let us
dedicate it to the sacrifice that is required
in these present days. Let us dedicate it
to the hope of the future. Let us dedicate
it to New England ideals — those ideals
that have made Massachusetts one of the
strong States of the Nation; strong enough
so that in Revolutionary days we contrib-
uted far in excess of our portion of men
and money to that great struggle; strong
enough so that the whole Nation has looked
to Massachusetts in days of stress for com-
fort and support.
TOWN-HOUSE, WESTON 101
We are very proud of our democracy. We
are very proud of our form of government.
We believe that there is no other nation on
earth that gives to the individual the privi-
leges and the rights that he has in America.
The time has come now when we are going
to defend those rights. The time has come
when the world is looking to America, as
the Nation has looked to Massachusetts in
the past, to stand up and defend the rights
of the individual. Sovereignty, it is our be-
lief, is vested in the individual; and we are
going to protect the rights of the individual.
It is an auspicious moment to dedicate here
in New England one of our town halls, an
auspicious moment in which to dedicate it
to the supremacy of those ideals for which
the whole world is fighting at the present
time; that the rights of the individual as
they were established here in the past may
be maintained by us now and carried to a
yet greater development in the future.
102 AMHERST ALUMNI DINNER
XV
AMHERST ALUMNI DINNER
SPRINGFIELD
MARCH 15, 1918
THE individual may not require the higher
institutions of learning, but society does.
Without them civilization as we know it
would fall from mankind in a night. They
minister not alone to their own students,
they minister to all humanity.
It is this same ancient spirit which, com-
ing to the defence of the Nation, has in this
new day of peril made nearly every college
campus a training field for military service,
and again sent graduate and undergraduate
into the fighting forces of our country. They
are demonstrating again that they are the
strongholds of ordered liberty and individ-
ual freedom. This has ever been the dis-
tinguishing characteristic of the American
institution of learning. They have believed
SPRINGFIELD
103
in democracy because they believed in the
nobility of man; they have served society
because they have looked upon the posses-
sion of learning not as conferring a privi-
lege but as laying on a duty. They have
taught and practised the precept that the
greater man's power the greater his obliga-
tion. The supreme choice is righteousness.
It is that "moral power" to which Profes-
sor Tyler referred as the great contribution
of college men to the cause of the Union.
The Nation is taking a military census, it
is thinking now in terms of armament. The
officers of government are discussing man-
power, transportation by land and sea and
through the air, the production of rifles,
artillery, and explosives, the raising of
money by loans and taxation. The Nation
ought to be most mightily engaged in this
work. It must put every ounce of its re-
sources into the production and organiza-
tion of its material power. But these are to
a degree but the outward manifestations of
104 AMHERST ALUMNI DINNER
something yet more important. The ulti-
mate result of all wars and of this war has
been and will be determined by the moral
power of the nations engaged. On that will
depend whether armies "ray out darkness"
or are the source of light and life and liberty.
Without the support of the moral power of
the Nation armies will prove useless, with-
out a moral victory, whatever the fortunes
of the battlefield, there can be no abiding
peace.
Whatever the difficulties of an exact defi-
nition may be the manifestations of moral
power are not difficult to recognize. The
life of America is rich with such examples.
It has been predominant here. It established
thirteen colonies which were to a large
degree self-sustaining and self-governing.
They fought and won a revolutionary war.
What manner of men they were, what was
the character of their leadership, was at-
tested only in part by Saratoga and York-
town. Washington had displayed great
SPRINGFIELD 105
power on many fields of battle, the colo-
nists had suffered long and endured to the
end, but the glory of military power fades
away beside the picture of the victorious
general, returning his commission to the
representatives of a people who would have
made him king, and retiring after two terms
from the Presidency which he could have
held for life, and the picture of a war-worn
people turning from debt, disorder, almost
anarchy, not to division, not to despotism,
but to national unity under the ordered
liberty of the Federal Constitution.
It was manifested again in the adoption
and defence by the young nation of that
principle which is known as the Monroe
Doctrine that European despotism should
make no further progress in the Western
Hemisphere. It is in the great argument of
Webster replying to Hayne and the stout
declaration of Jackson that he would treat
nullification as treason. It was the compelling
force of the Civil War, expounded by Lin-
106 AMHERST ALUMNI DINNER
coin in his unyielding purpose to save the
Union but "with malice toward none, with
charity for all," which General Grant, his
greatest soldier, put into practice at Appo-
mattox when he sent General Lee back with
his sword, and his soldiers home to the
plantations, with their war horses for the
spring plowing. And at the conclusion of
the Spanish War it is to the ever- enduring
credit of our country that it exacted not
penalties, but justice, and actually compen-
sated a defeated foe for public property
that had come to our hands in the Philip-
pines as the result of the fortunes of battle.
But what of the present crisis? Is the heart
ofr the Nation still sound, does it still re-
spond to the appeal to the high ideals of the
past? If those two and one half years, be-
fore the American declaration of war, shall
appear, when unprejudiced history is writ-
ten, to have been characterized by patience,
forbearance, and self-restraint, they will
add to the credit of former days. If they
SPRINGFIELD 107
were characterized by selfishness, by poli-
tics, by a balancing of expediency against
justice they will be counted as a time of
ignominy for which a victorious war would
furnish scant compensation.
108 MESSAGE FOR THE BOSTON POST
XVI
MESSAGE FOR THE BOSTON POST
APRIL 22, 1918
THE nation with the greatest moral power
will win. Of that are born armies and navies
and the resolution to endure. Have faith
in the moral power of America. It gave in-
dependence under Washington and freedom
under Lincoln. Here, right never lost. Here,
wrong never won. However powerful the
forces of evil may appear, somewhere there
are more powerful forces of righteousness.
Courage and confidence are our heritage.
Justice is our might. The outcome is in
your hand, my fellow American; if you de-
serve to win, the Nation cannot lose.
ROXBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 109
XVII
ROXBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
BUNKER HILL DAY
JUNE 17, 1918
REVERENCE is the measure not of others
but of ourselves. This assemblage on the one
hundred and forty-third anniversary of the
Battle of Bunker Hill tells not only of the
spirit of that day but of the spirit of to-day.
What men worship that will they become.
The heroes and holidays of a people which
fascinate their soul reveal what they hold
are the realities of life and mark out a line
beyond which they will not retreat, but at
which they will stand to overcome or die.
They who reverence Bunker Hill will fight
there. Your true patriot sees home and
hearthstone in the welfare of his country.
Rightly viewed, then, this day is set
apart for an examination of ourselves by re-
counting the deeds of the men of long ago.
110 ROXBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
What was there in the events of the seven-
teenth day of June, 1775, which holds the
veneration of Americans and the increasing
admiration of the world? There are the
physical facts not too unimportant to be
unworthy of reiteration even in the learned
presence of an Historical Society. A de-
tachment of men clad for the most part in
the dress of their daily occupations, stand-
ing with bared heads and muskets grounded
muzzle down in the twilight glow on Cam-
bridge Common, heard Samuel Langdon,
President of Harvard College, seek divine
blessing on their cause and marched away
in the darkness to a little eminence at
Charlestown, where, ere the setting of an-
other sun, much history was to be made
and much glory lost and won. When a new
dawn had lifted the mists of the Bay, the
British, under General Howe, saw an in-
trenchment on Breed's Hill, which must
be taken or Boston abandoned. The works
were exposed in the rear to attack from
BUNKER HILL DAY 111
land and sea. This was disdained by the
king's soldiers in their contempt for the
supposed fighting ability of the Americans.
Leisurely, as on dress parade, they assem-
bled for an assault that they thought was to
be a demonstration of the uselessness of any
armed resistance on the part of the Colo-
nies. In splendid array they advanced late
in the day. A few straggling shots and all
was still behind the parapet. It was easier
than they had expected. But when they
reached a point where 't is said the men be-
hind the intrenchments could see the whites
of their eyes, they were met by a withering
fire that tore their ranks asunder and sent
them back in disorder, utterly routed by
their despised foes. In time they form and
advance again but the result is the same.
The demonstration of superiority was not
a success. For a third time they form, not
now for dress parade, but for a hazardous
assault. This time the result was different.
The patriots had lost nothing of courage or
112 ROXBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
determination but there was left scarcely
one round of powder. They had no bayonets.
Pouring in their last volley and still resist-
ing with clubbed muskets, they retired
slowly and in order from the field. So great
was the British loss that there was no pur-
suit. The intensity of the battle is told
by the loss of the Americans, out of about
fifteen hundred engaged, of nearly twenty
per cent, and of the British, out of some
thirty-five hundred engaged, of nearly
thirty-three per cent, all in one and one
half hours.
It was the story of brave men bravely led
but insufficiently equipped. Their leader,
Colonel Prescott, had walked the breast-
works to show his men that the cannonade
was not particularly dangerous. John Stark,
bringing his company, in which were his
Irish compatriots, across Charlestown Neck
under the guns of the battleships, refused
to quicken his step. His Major, Andrew Mc-
Cleary, fell at the rail fence which he had
BUNKER HILL DAY 113
held during the day. Dr. Joseph Warren,
your own son of Roxbury, fell in the re-
treat, but the Americans, though picking
off his officers, spared General Howe. They
had fought the French under his brother.
Such were some of the outstanding deeds
of the day. But these were the deeds of men
and the deeds of men always have an in-
ward significance. In distant Philadelphia,
on this very day, the Continental Congress
had chosen as the Commander of their
Army, General George Washington, a man
whose clear vision looked into the realities
of things and did not falter. On his way
to the front four days later, dispatches
reached him of the battle. He revealed the
meaning of j the day with, one question,
"Did the militia fight?" Learning how
those heroic men fought, he said, "Then
the liberties of the Country are safe." No
greater commentary has ever been made on
the significance of Bunker Hill.
We read events by what goes before and
114 ROXBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
after. We think of Bunker Hill as the first
real battle for independence, the prelude to
the Revolution. Yet these were both after-
thoughts. Independence Day was still more
than a year away and then eight years from
accomplishment. The Revolution cannot be
said to have become established until the
adoption of the Federal Constitution. No,
on this June day, these were not the con-
scious objects sought. They were contend-
ing for the liberties of the country, they
were not yet bent on establishing a new na-
tion nor on recognizing that relationship
between men which the modern world calls
democracy. They were maintaining well
their traditions, these sons of Londonderry,
lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray,
and these sons of the Puritans, whom Ma-
caulay tells us humbly abased themselves in
the dust before the Lord, but hesitated not
to set their foot upon the neck of their
king.
It is the moral quality of the day that
BUNKER HILL DAY 115
abides. It was the purpose of those plain
garbed men behind the parapet that told
whether they were savages bent on plunder,
living under the law of the jungle, or sons
of the morning bearing the light of civiliza-
tion. The glorious revolution of 1688 was
fading from memory. The English Govern-
ment of that day rested upon privilege and
corruption at the base, surmounted by a
king bent on despotism, but fortunately too
weak to accomplish any design either of
good or ill. An empire still outwardly sound
was rotting at the core. The privilege which
had found Great Britain so complacent
sought to establish itself over the Colonies.
The purpose of the patriots was resistance
to tyranny. Pitt and Burke and Lord Cam-
den in England recognized this, and, loving
liberty, approved the course of the Colon- -
ies. The Tories here, loving privilege, ap-
proved the course of the Royal Govern-
ment. Bunker Hill meant that the Colonies
would save themselves and saving them*
116 ROXBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
selves save the mother country for liberty.
The war was not inevitable. Perhaps wars
are never inevitable. But the conflict be-
tween freedom and privilege was inevitable.
That it broke out in America rather than
in England was accidental. Liberty, the
rights of man against tyranny, the rights
of kings, was in the air. One side must give
way. There might have been a peaceful
settlement by timely concessions such as
the Reform Bill of England some fifty
years later, or the Japanese reforms of our
own times, but wanting that a collision was
inevitable. Lacking a Bunker Hill there had
been another Dunbar.
The eighteenth century was the era of
the development of political rights. It was
the culmination of the ideas of the Renais-
sance. It was the putting into practice in
government of the answer to the long pon-
dered and much discussed question, "What
is right?" Custom was giving way at last
to reason. Class and caste and place, all the
BUNKER HILL DAY 117
distinctions based on appearance and acci-
dent were giving way before reality. Men
turned from distinctions which were tem-
poral to those which were eternal. The
sovereignty of kings and the nobility of
peers was swallowed up in the sovereignty
and nobility of all men. The inequal in
quantity became equal in quality.
The successful solution of this problem
was the crowning glory of a century and a
half of America. It established for all time
how men ought to act toward each other in
the governmental relation. The rule of the
people had begun.
Bunker Hill had a deeper significance. It
was an example of the great law of human
progress and civilization. There has been
much talk in recent years of the survival of
the fittest and of efficiency. We are begin-
ning to hear of the development of the
super-man and the claim that he has of
right dominion over the rest of his inferiors
on earth. This philosophy denies the doc-
118 ROXBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
trine of equality and holds that government
is not based on consent but on compulsion.
It holds that the weak must serve the strong,
which is the law of slavery, it applies the
law of the animal world to mankind and
puts science above morals. This sounds the
call to the jungle. It is not an advance to
the morning but a retreat to night. It is not
the light of human reason but the darkness
of the wisdom of the serpent.
The law of progress and civilization is
not the law of the jungle. It is not an earthly
law, it is a divine law. It does not mean the
survival of the fittest, it means the sacri-
fice of the fittest. Any mother will give her
life for her child. Men put the women and
children in the lifeboats before they them-
selves will leave the sinking ship. John
Hampden and Nathan Hale did not sur-
vive, nor did Lincoln, but Benedict Arnold
did. The example above all others takes us
back to Jerusalem some nineteen hundred
years ago. The men of Bunker Hill were
BUNKER HILL DAY
true disciples of civilization, because they
were willing to sacrifice themselves to resist
the evils and redeem the liberties of the
British Empire. The proud shaft which
rises over their battlefield and the bronze
form of Joseph Warren in your square are
not monuments to expediency or success,
they are monuments to righteousness.
This is the age-old story. Men are read-
ing it again to-day — written in blood. The
Prussian military despotism has abandoned
the law of civilization for the law of bar-
barism. We could approve and join in the
scramble to the jungle, or we could resist
and sacrifice ourselves to save an erring na-
tion. Not being beasts, but men, we choose
the sacrifice.
This brings us to the part that America
is taking at the end of its second hundred
and fifty years of existence. Is it not a part
of that increasing purpose which the poet,
the seer, tells us runs through the ages? Has
not our Nation been raised up and strength-
120 ROXBURY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
ened, trained and prepared, to meet the
great sacrifice that must be made now to
save the world from despotism? We have
heard much of our lack of preparation. We
have been altogether lacking in prepara-
tion in a strict military sense. We had no
vast forces of artillery or infantry, no large
stores of munitions, few trained men. But
let us not forget to pay proper respect to the
preparation we did have, which was the
result of long training and careful teaching.
We had a mental, a moral, a spiritual train-
ing that fitted us equally with any other
people to engage in this great contest which
after all is a contest of ideas as well as of
arms. We must never neglect the military
preparation again, but we may as well rec-
ognize that we have had a preparation with-
out which arms in our hands would very
much resemble in purpose those now ar-
rayed against us.
Are we not realizing a noble destiny? The
great Admiral who discovered America
BUNKER HILL DAY 121
bore the significant name of Christopher. It
has been pointed out that this name means
Christ-bearer. Were not the men who stood
at Bunker Hill bearing light to the world by
their sacrifices? Are not the men of to-day,
the entire Nation of to-day, living in accord-
ance with the significance of that name,
and by their service and sacrifice redeeming
mankind from the forces that make for
everlasting destruction? We seek no terri-
tory and no rewards. We give but do not
take. We seek for a victory of our ideas. Our
arms are but the means. America follows no
such delusion as a place in the sun for the
strong by the destruction of the weak. Amer-
ica seeks rather, by giving of her strength
for the service of the weak, a place in eter-
nity.
FAIRHAVEN
XVIII
FAIRHAVEN
JULY 4, 1918
WE have met on this anniversary of Amer-
ican independence to assess the dimensions
of a kind deed. Nearly four score years ago
the master of a whaling vessel sailing from
this port rescued from a barren rock in
the China Sea some Japanese fishermen.
Among them was a young boy whom he
brought home with him to Fairhaven,
where he was given the advantages of New
England life and sent to school with the
boys and girls of the neighborhood, where
he excelled in his studies. But as he grew up
he was filled with a longing to see Japan and
his aged mother. He knew that the duty of
filial piety lay upon him according to the
teachings of his race, and he was deter-
mined to meet that obligation. I think that
is one of the lessons of this day. Here was a
FAIRHAVEN
youth who determined to pursue the course
which he had been taught was right. He
braved the dangers of the voyage and the
greater dangers that awaited an absentee
from his country under the then existing
laws, to perform his duty to his mother and
to his native land. In making that return I
think we are entitled to say that he was the
first Ambassador of America to the Court
of Japan, for his extraordinary experience
soon brought him into the association of
the highest officials of his country, and his
presence there prepared the way for the
friendly reception which was given to Com-
modore Perry when he was sent to Japan to
open relations between that Government
and the Government of America.
And so we see how out of the kind deed of
Captain Whitefield, friendly relations which
have existed for many years between the
people of Japan and the people of America
were encouraged and made possible. And it
is in recognition of that event that we have
124 FAIRHAVEN
here to-day this great concourse of people,
this martial array, and the representative of
the Japanese people — a people who have
never failed to respond to an act of kind-
ness.
It was with special pleasure that I came
here representing the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, to extend an official wel-
come to His Excellency Viscount Ishii, who
comes here to present to the town of Fair-
haven a Sumari sword on behalf of the son
of that boy who was rescued long ago. This
sword was once the emblem of place and
caste and arbitrary rank. It has taken on
a new significance because Captain White-
field was true to the call of humanity, be-
cause a Japanese boy was true to his call
of duty. This emblem will hereafter be a
token not only of the friendship that exists
between two nations but a token of liberty,
of freedom, and of the recognition by the
Government of both these nations of the
rights of the people. Let it remain here as a
FAIRHAVEN 125
mutual pledge by the giver and the receiver
of their determination that the motive
which inspired the representatives of each
race to do right is to be a motive which is to
govern the people of the earth.
126 SOMERVELLE REPUBLICAN
XIX
SOMERVILLE REPUBLICAN CITY
COMMITTEE
AUGUST 7, 1918
COMING into your presence in ordinary
times, gentlemen of the committee, I should
be. inclined to direct your attention to the
long and patriotic services of our party, to
the great benefits its policies have conferred
upon this Nation, to the illustrious names
of our leaders, to our present activities, and
to our future party policy. But these are
not ordinary times. Our country is at war.
There is no way to save our party if our
country be lost. And in the present crisis
there is only one way to save our country.
We must support the State and National
Governments in whatever they request for
the conduct of the war. The Constitution
makes the President Commander-in-Chief
of the Army and Navy. What he needs
CITY COMMITTEE 127
should be freely given. This has been and
will be the policy of the Republican admin-
istration of Massachusetts and of her Sena-
tors and Representatives in Congress. We
seek no party advantage from the distress
of our country. Among Republicans there
will be no political profiteering.
It is a year and four months now since
we declared the German Government was
making war on America. We are beginning
to see what our requirements are. We had
a small but efficient standing army, and
a larger but less efficient National Guard.
These have been increased by enlistments.
We have a new national force, — never to
be designated as Conscripts, but as the ac-
cepted soldiers of a whole Nation that has
volunteered, of almost unlimited numbers.
By taxation and by three Liberty Loans,
each over-subscribed by more than fifty per
cent, we have demonstrated that there will
be no lack of money. The problem of the
production and conservation of food is be-
128 SOMERVILLE REPUBLICAN
ing met, though not yet without some incon-
venience, yet so far with very little suffer-
ing. The remaining factor is the production
of the necessary materials for carrying on
the war. We lack ships and military sup-
plies. Whether these are secured in time in
sufficient quantity will depend in a large
measure upon the attitude of the people
managing and employed in these industries.
The attitude of the leaders of organized
labor has been patriotic. They realize that
this is a war to preserve the rights that have
been won for the people, and they have at
all times advised their fellow workmen to
remain at work. There must be forbearance
on all sides. Where wages are too low they
should be increased voluntarily. Where
there is disagreement the Government has
provided means for investigation and ad-
justment. Our industrial front must keep
pace with our military front.
We are demonstrating the ability of
America. Within the last few days the re-
CITY COMMITTEE 129
port has come to us that our soldiers have
defeated the Prussian Guard. The sneer of
Germany at America is vanishing. It is true
that the German high command still couple
American and African soldiers together in
intended derision. What they say in scorn,
let us say in praise. We have fought be-
fore for the rights of all men irrespective
of color. We are proud to fight now with
colored men for the rights of white men. It
would be fitting recognition of their worth
to send our American negro, when that
time comes, to inform the Prussian military
despotism on what terms their defeated
armies are to be granted peace.
While the victories that have recently
come to our arms are most encouraging,
they should only stimulate us to redoubled
efforts. The only hope of a short war is to
prepare for a long one. In this work the
States play a most important part. Massa-
chusetts must be kept so organized and
governed as to continue that able, effective.
130 SOMERVILLE REPUBLICAN
and prompt cooperation with the National
Government that has marked the past prog-
ress of the war. In this we have a great
part to do here. It was for such a task that
the Republican Party came into being sixty-
four years ago. One of the resolutions
adopted at its birth peculiarly dedicates it
to the requirements of the present hour.
"Resolved, that in view of the necessity
of battling for the first principles of repub-
lican government and against the schemes
of an aristocracy, the most revolting and
oppressive with which the earth was ever
cursed, or man debased, we will cooperate
and be known as 'Republicans' until the
contest be terminated."
This great work lies before our party in
Massachusetts. We shall go on battling for
the first principles of Republican govern-
ment until it has been secured to all the
people of the earth.
\_ Our American forces on sea and land are
proving sufficient to turn the tide in favor
CITY COMMITTEE 131
of the Allied cause. They could not succeed
alone, we could not succeed alone. We are
furnishing a reserve power that is bringing
victory.
But America must furnish more than
armies and navies for the future. If armies
and navies were to be supreme, Germany
would be right. There are other and greater
forces in the world than march to the roll
of the drum. As we are turning the scale
with our sword now, so hereafter we must
turn the scale with the moral power of
America. It must be our disinterested plans
that are to restore Europe to a place through
justice when we have secured victory
through the sword.And into a new world we
are to take not only the people of oppressed
Europe but the people of America. Out of
our sacrifice and suffering, out of our blood
and tears, America shall have a new
awakening, a rededication to the cause of
Washington and Lincoln, a firmer convic-
tion for the right.
WRITTEN FOR THE
XX
WRITTEN FOR THE SUNDAY ADVER-
TISER AND AMERICAN
. SEPTEMBER 1, 1918
THE man who seeks to stimulate and in-
crease the production of materials necessary
for the conduct of the war by raising the
price he pays is a patriot. The man who re-
fuses to sell at a fine price whatever he may
have that is necessary for the conduct of
the war is a profiteer. One man seeks to
help his country at his own expense, the
other seeks to help himself at his country's
expense. One is willing to suffer himself that
his country may prosper, the other is will-
ing his country should suffer that he may
prosper.
In ordinary times these difficulties are
taken care of by the operation of the law of
supply and demand. If the price is too high
the buyer has time to^go elsewhere. In war
ADVERTISER AND AMERICAN 133
the element of time is one of the chief con-
siderations. When what is wanted is once
found it must be made available at once.
The principle of trusteeship also comes into
more immediate operation. It is recognized
in time of peace that the public may take
what it may need of private property for
the general welfare, paying a fair compen-
sation, and that the right to own property
carries with it the duty of using it for the
welfare of our fellow man. The time has
gone by when onfe may do what he will
with his own. He must use his property for
the general good or the very right to hold
private property is lost.
These are some of the rules to be ob-
served in the relationship between man and
man. To see that these rules are properly
enforced, governments are formed. When
they are not observed — when the strong
refuse voluntary justice to the weak —
then it is time for the strong arm of the law
through the public officers to intervene and
134 WRITTEN FOR THE
see that the weak are protected. This can
usually be done by the enactment of a law
which all will try to obey, but when this
course has failed there is no remedy save
by the process of law to take from the
wrong-doer his power in the future to do
harm.
America is built on faith in the individ-
ual, faith in his will and power to do right
of his own accord, but equally is the deter-
mination that the individual shall be pro-
tected against whatsoever force may be
brought against him. We believe in him not
because of what he has, but what he is. But
this is a practical faith. It does not rest on
any silly assumption that virtue is the re-
ward of anything but effort or that liberty
can be secured at the price of anything but
eternal vigilance.
It is in recognition of these principles and
conditions that the General Court of last
year gave the Governor power to make
rules for the use by individuals of their
ADVERTISER AND AMERICAN 135
property during the war for the general de-
fence of the Commonwealth, and on failure
on their part so to use their property, to
take possession of it for such term as may
be necessary. Up to the present time it has
not been necessary to take property. Our
faith in the patriotism of our citizens has
been amply demonstrated. Of our four mil-
lions of people few have failed voluntarily
to use their every resource for the defence
of the Nation. But of late there have been
some complaints of too high charges for
rent in war-material centres. In some cases
patriotic workmen engaged in labor most
vital to our country's salvation have been,
threatened with eviction by profiteering
landlords unless they paid exorbitant rents.
No one is undertaking to say that rents
must on no account be raised. But the Ex-
ecutive Department of Massachusetts is
undertaking to say that in any case where
rents are unreasonably raised to the detri-
ment of people who are just as essential to
136 WRITTEN FOR THE
our victory as the soldier in the field, if any
one is to be evicted from such premises it
will be the persons who are raising rents
and not the persons who are asked to pay
them. This action is taken to protect the
Nation. It is taken in our desire and deter-
mination here to cooperate with the Federal
Government in every activity that is nec-
essary to the prosecution of the war. It is
taken also for the protection of the individ-
ual. We do not care how humble he may
be, we do not care how exalted the landlord
may be, justice shall be done.
This is not to be taken as an offer on the
part of the Commonwealth to have un-
loaded on it a large amount of property at
a high price. Possession may be taken, but
the ownership will not change. Unless rea-
sonable rents are charged, the tenant will
stay in possession, but the rent which the
Commonwealth shall pay for occupation
will be determined by a jury. This means
justice, nothing more, nothing less — jus-
ADVERTISER AND AMERICAN 137
tice to the tenant, justice to the landlord.
It is not to be inferred that our real estate
owners have lacked anything as a class in
patriotism. They are our most loyal, most
self-sacrificing, most commendable citi-
zens. Massachusetts by its Homestead Com-
mission is encouraging its citizens to own
real estate because such ownership is a
sheet anchor to self-government. But it is
a proclamation of warning to profiteers, of
approbation and approval to patriots, and
of assurance and assistance to the working
people and rent payers of our Common*
wealth.
138
ESSEX COUNTY CLUB
XXI
ESSEX COUNTY CLUB, LYNNFIELD
SEPTEMBER 14, 1918
WE meet here to-day as the inheritors of
those principles which preserved our Na-
tion and extended its constitutional guar-
anties to all its citizens. We come not as
partisans but as patriots. We come to pledge
anew our faith in all that America means
and to declare our firm determination to
defend her within and without from every
foe. Above that we come to pay our tribute
of wonder and admiration at the great
achievements of our Nation and at the
glory which they are shedding around her.
The past four years has shown the world
the existence of a conspiracy against man-
kind of a vastness and a wickedness that
could only be believed when seen in opera-
tion and confessed by its participants. This
conspiracy was promoted by the German
LYNNFIELD 139
military despotism. It probably was en-
couraged by the results of three wars — one
against Denmark which robbed her of ter-
ritory, one against Austria which robbed her
of territory, and one against France which
robbed her of territory and a cash indem-
nity of a billion dollars. These seemingly
easy successes encouraged their perpetra-
tors to plan for the pillage and enslavement
of the earth.
To accomplish this, the German despot-
ism began at home. By a systematic train-
ing the whole German people were per-
verted. A false idea of their own greatness
was added to their contempt and hate of
other nations, who, they were taught,
were bent on their destruction. The mili-
tary class were exalted and all else degraded.
Thus was laid the foundation for the atroc-
ities which have marked their conduct of
the war.
The vastness of the conquest planned has
recently been revealed by August Thyssen,
140 ESSEX COUNTY CLUB
one of the greatest steel men of the empire.
He tells of a calling together, in the years
before the war, of the industrial and bank-
ing interests of the Nation, when a plan
of war was laid before them, and their
support secured by the promise of spoils.
France, India, Canada, Australia were to
be given over to German satraps. His share
was 30,000 acres in Australia, with $750,-
000 provided by the Government for its de-
velopment. This was the promise made by
the Kaiser. Here was the motive of the war.
How it was provoked is told by Prince
Lichnowski, the Ambassador of Germany
to London. He shows how he had reached
agreements for a treaty which would show
the good will of Great Britain. Berlin re-
fused to sign it unless it should be kept
secret. He shows how Germany used Austria
to attack Serbia; how mediations were re-
fused; when Austria was about to withdraw,
Germany sent an ultimatum to Russia one
day and the next day declared war.
LYNNFIELD 141
This diplomat sums up the whole case
when he says: "I had to support in London
a policy the heresy of which I recognized.
That brought down vengeance on me be-
cause it was a sin against the Holy Ghost."
What an indictment of Germany from her
own confession! A plan to use the revela-
tions of science for the sack and slavery
of the earth; the degradation, perversion,
corruption of a whole people, and by those
who should have been the wardens of their
righteousness, done for the temporal glory
of a military caste, and all in the name of
divine right.
Much of this was not known in America
when we declared war. It is with great diffi-
culty we realize it now. We had seen Ger-
many going from infamy to infamy. We did
know of the violated treaty of Belgium,
of the piracy, the murder of women and
children, the destruction of the property
and lives of our neutral citizens, and finally
the plain declaration of the German Im-
143 ESSEX COUNTY CLUB
perial Government that it would wantonly
and purposely destroy the property and
lives of any American citizen who exercised
his undoubted legal right to sail certain por-
tions of the sea. This attempt to declare
law for America by an edict from Potsdam
we resisted by the sword. We see at last not
only the hideous wickedness which perpe-
trated the war, we see that it is a world war,
that Germany struck not only at Belgium,
she struck at us, she struck at our whole
system of civilization. A wicked purpose,
which a vain attempt to realize has involved
its authors in more and more wickedness.
We hear that even among the civil popula-
tion of Germany crime is rampant.
Looking now at this condition of Ger-
many and her Allies, it is time to inquire
what America and her Allies have to offer
as a remedy, and what effect the application
of such remedy has had upon ourselves. We
have drawn the sword, but is it only to
" Be blood for blood, for treason treachery? "
LYNNFIELD 143
Are we seeking merely to match infamy
with infamy, merely to pillage and de-
stroy those who threatened to pillage and
destroy us? No; we have taken more than
the sword, lest we perish by the sword; we
have summoned the moral power of the
Nation. We have recognized that evil is
only to be overcome by good. We have mar-
shalled the righteousness of America to
overwhelm the wickedness of Germany. A
new spirit has come over the nation the
like of which was never seen before. We can
see it not only in the new purity of camp
life, in the heroism of our soldiers as they
fight in the faith and for the faith of the
fathers, but we see it in the healing influ-
ences which a righteous purpose has had
upon the evils which beset us.
We entered the war a people of many
nationalities. We are united now; every one
is first an American. We were beset with
jealousies, and envy, and class prejudice.
Service in the camp has taught each sol-
144 ESSEX COUNTY CLUB
dier to respect the other, whatever his
source, and a mutual sympathy at home
has brought all into a common citizenship.
The service flag is a great leveller.
Our industrial life has been purified of
prejudice. No one is complaining now that
any concern is too large, too strong. All see
that the great organizations of capital in
industry are our salvation. Labor has taken
on a new dignity and nobility. When the
idle see the necessity of work, when we be-
gin to recognize industry as essential, the
working man begins to have paid him the
honor which is his due.
Invention, chemistry, medicine, surgery,
have been stimulated and improved. Even
our agriculture has taken on more eco-
nomical methods and increased production.
The call for man power has given a new
idea of the importance of the individual, so
that there has been brought to the hum-
blest the knowledge that he was not only
important but his importance was realized.
LYNNFIELD 145
And with this has come the discovery of
new powers, not only in the slouch whom
military drill has transformed into a man,
but to labor that has found a new joy, satis-
faction and efficiency in its work. The en-
tire activities of the Nation are tuned up.
The spirit of charity has been aroused.
Hundreds of millions have been provided by
voluntary gifts for the Red Cross, Knights
of Columbus, Hebrew Charities, and Chris-
tian Associations. The people are turning to
their places of worship with a new religious
fervor. Everywhere selfishness is giving
way to service, idleness to industry, waste-
fulness to thrift.
The war is being won. It is being over-
whelmingly won. A righteous purpose has
not only strengthened our arms abroad but
exalted the Nation at home.
The great work before us is to keep this
new spirit in the right path. The oppor-
tunity for a military training, the beneficial
results of its discipline, must be continued
146 ESSEX COUNTY CLUB
for the youth of our country. The sacrifice
necessary for national defence must here-
after never be neglected. The virtues of war
must be carried into peace. But this must
not be done at the expense of the freedom of
the individual. It must be the expression
of self-government and not the despotism
of a German military caste or a Russian
Bolshevik state. We are in this war to pre-
serve the institutions that have made us
great. The war has revealed to us their true
greatness. All argument about the effi-
ciency of despotism and the incompetence
of republics was answered at the Marne
and will be hereafter answered at the Rhine.
We are not going to overcome the Kaiser
by becoming like him, nor aid Russia by
becoming like her.
We see now that Prussian despotism was
the natural ally of the Russian Bolshevik
and the I.W.W. here. Both exist to per-
vert and enslave the people; both seek to
break down the national spirit of the world
LYNNFJELD 147
for their own wicked ends. Both are doomed
to failure. By taking our place in the world,
America is to become more American, as
by doing his duty the individual develops
his own manhood. We see now that when
the individual fails, whether it be from a
despotism or the dead level of a socialistic
state, all has failed.
A new vision has come to the Nation, a
vision that must never be obscured. It is
for us to heed it, to follow it. It is a revela-
tion, but a revelation not of our weakness
but of our strength, not of new principles,
but of the power that lies in the application
of old doctrines. May that vision never
fade, may America inspired by a great pur-
pose ever be able to say,
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of
the Lord."
148 TREMONT TEMPLE
XXII
TREMONT TEMPLE
NOVEMBER 2, 1918
To the greatest task man ever undertook
our Commonwealth has applied itself, will
continue to apply itself with no laggard
hand. One hundred and ninety thousand
of her sons already in the field, hundreds of
millions of her treasure contributed to the
cause, her entire citizenship moved with a
single purpose, all these show a determina-
tion unalterable, to prosecute the war to a
victory so conclusive, to a destruction of all
enemy forces so decisive, that those im-
pious pretentious which have threatened
the earth for many years will never be re-
newed. There can be no discussion about it,
there can be no negotiation about it. The
country is united in the conviction that the
only terms are unconditional surrender.
This determination has arisen from no
TREMONT TEMPLE 149
sudden impulse or selfish motive. It was
forced upon us by the plan and policy of
Germany and her methods of waging war
upon others. The main features of it all have
long been revealed while each day brings
to light more of the details. We have seen
the studied effort to make perverts of sixty
millions of German people. We know of the
corrupting of the business interests of the
Empire to secure their support. We know
that war had been decreed before the pre-
text on which it was declared had happened.
We know Austria was and is the creature of
Germany. We have beheld the violation of
innocent Belgium, the hideous outrages on
soldier and civilian, the piracy, the murder
of our own neutral citizens, and finally
there came the notice, which as an insult to
America has been exceeded only by the re-
cent suggestion that we negotiate a peace
with its authors, — the notice claiming do-
minion over our citizens and authority to
exclude our ships from the sea. The great
150 TREMONT TEMPLE
pretender to the throne of the earth thought
the time had corne to assert that we were
his subjects. Two millions of our men al-
ready in France, and each day ten thou-
sand more are hastening to pay their re-
spects to him at his court in Berlin in per-
son. He has our answer.
It would be a mistake to suppose we have
already won the war. It is not won yet, but
we have reached the place where we know
how to win it, and if we continue our ex-
ertions we shall win it fully, completely,
grandly, as becomes a great people contend-
ing for the xcause of righteousness.
We entered the war late and without
previous military preparation. The more
clearly we discern the beginning and the
progress of the struggle, the more we must
admire the great spirit of those nations by
whose side we fight. The more we know of
the terrible price they paid, the matchless
sacrifices they magnificently endured — - the
French, the Italians, the British, the Bel-
TREMONT TEMPLE 151
gians, the Serbians, the Poles, and the mis-
governed, misguided people of Russia —
the bravery of their soldiers in the field,
the unflinching devotion of their people at
home, and remember that in no small sense
they were doing this for us, that we have
been the direct beneficiaries of peoples who
have given their all, the less disposition we
have to think too much of our own impor-
tance. But all this should not cause us to
withhold the praise that is due our own
Army and Navy, or to overlook the fact
that our people have met every call that
patriotism has made. The soldiers and sail-
ors who fight under the Stars and Stripes
are the most magnificent body of men that
ever took up arms for defence of a great
cause. Man for man they surpass any other
troops on earth.
We must not forget these things. We
must not neglect to record them for the
information of generations to come. The
names and records of boards and commis-
152 TREMONT TEMPLE
sions, relief societies, of all who have en-
gaged in financing the cause of government
and charity, and other patriotic work,
should be preserved in the Library of the
Commonwealth, and with these, our mili-
tary achievements. These will show how
American soldiers met and defeated the
Prussian Guard. They will show also that
in all the war no single accomplishment, on
a like scale, excelled the battle of St. Mihiel,
carried out by American troops, with our
own Massachusetts boys among them, and
that the first regiment to be decorated as a
regiment for conspicuous service and gal-
lantry in our Army in France was the 104th,
formerly of the old Massachusetts National
Guard. Such is our record and it cannot be
forgotten.
In reaching the great decision to enter
the war, in preparing the answer which
speaks with so much authority, in the only
language that despotism can understand,
America has arisen to a new life. We have
TREMONT TEMPLE 153
taken a new place among the nations. The
Revolution made us a nation; the Spanish
War made us a world power, the present
war has given us recognition as a world
power. We shall not again be considered
provincial. Whether we desired it or not
this position has come to us with its duties
and its responsibilities.
This new position should not be misun-
derstood. It does not mean any diminution
of our national spirit. It rather means that
it should be intensified. The most outstand-
ing feature of the war has been the asser-
tion of the national spirit. Each nationality
is contending for the right to have its own
government, and in that is meeting with
the sanction of the free peoples of the earth.
We are discussing a league of nations. Such
a league, if formed, is not for the purpose,
must not be for the purpose, of diminishing
the spirit or influence of our Nation, but to
make that spirit and influence more real
and more effective. Believing in our Nation
154 TREMONT TEMPLE
thoroughly and unreservedly, confident
that the evidence of the past and present
justifies that belief, it is our one desire to
make America more American. There is
no greater service that we can render the
oppressed of the earth than to maintain in-
violate the freedom of our own citizens.
Under our National Government the
States are the sheet-anchors of our institu-
tions. On them falls the task of adminis-
tering local affairs and of supporting the
National Government hi peace and war.
The success with which Massachusetts has
met her local problems, the efficiency with
which she has placed her resources of men
and materials at the disposal of the Nation,
has been unsurpassed. The efficient organ-
ization of the Commonwealth, which has
proved itself in time of stress, must be main-
tained undiminished. On the States will
largely fall the task of putting into effect
the lessons of the war that are to make
America more truly American.
TREMONT TEMPLE 155
One of our first duties is military train-
ing. The opportunity hereafter for the
youth of the Nation to receive instruction
in the science of national defence should
be universal The great problem which our
present experience has brought is the de-
velopment of man power. This includes
many questions, but especially public
health and mental equipment. Sanitation
and education will require more attention
in the future.
America has been performing a great serv-
ice for humanity. In that service we have
arisen to a new glory. The people of the
nation without distinction have been per-
forming a great service for America. In it
they have realized a new citizenship. Prus-
sianism fails. Americanism succeeds. Edu-
cation is to teach men not what to think
but how to think. Government will take on
new activities, but it is not more to control
the people, the people are more to control
the Government.
156 TREMONT TEMPLE
We have come to the realization of a new
brotherhood among nations and among
men. It came through the performance of a
common duty. A brotherhood that existed
unseen has been recognized at last by those
called to the camp and trenches and those
working for their victory at home. This
spirit must not be misunderstood. It is not
a gospel of ease but of work, not of depend-
ence but of independence, not of an easy
tolerance of wrong but a stern insistence on
right, not the privilege of receiving but the
duty of giving.
"Man proposes but God disposes."
When Germany lit up her long toasted day
with the lurid glare of war, she thought the
end of freedom for the peoples of the earth
had come. She thought that the power of
her sword was hereafter to reign supreme
over a world in slavery, and that the divine
right of a king was to be established forever.
We have seen the drama drawing to its
close. It has shown the victory of justice
TREMONT TEMPLE 157
and of freedom and established the divine
rights of the people. Through it is shining
a new revelation of the true brotherhood
of man. As we see the purpose Germany
sought and the result she will secure, the
words of Holy Writ come back to us —
"The wrath of man shall praise Him."
158 FANEUIL HALL
XXIII
FANEUIL HALL
NOVEMBER 4, 1918
WE need a word of caution and of warning.
I am responsible for what I have said and
what I have done. I am not responsible for
what my opponents say I have said or say I
have done either on the stump or in untrue
political advertisements and untrue posters.
I shall not deal with these. I do not care to
touch them, but I do not want any of my
fellow citizens to misunderstand my ignor-
ing them as expressing any attitude other
than considering such attempts unworthy
of notice when men are fighting for the
preservation of our country.
Our work is drawing to a close — our
patriotic efforts. We have had in view but
one object — the saving of America.
We shall accomplish that object first by
winning the war. That means a great deal.
It means getting the world forever rid of
FANEUIL HALL 159
the German idea. We can see no way to do
this but by a complete surrender by Ger-
many to the Allies.
We stand by the State and National
Governments in the prosecution of this ob-
ject. I have reiterated that we support the
Commander-in-Chief in war work. He says
that is so.
We want no delay in prosecuting the war.
The quickest way is the way to save most
lives and treasure. We want to care for the
soldiers and their dependents. That has
been the recognized duty of the Govern-
ment for generations.
To save America means to save Ameri-
can institutions, it means to save the man-
hood and womanhood of our country. To
that we are pledged.
There will be great questions of recon-
struction, social, industrial, economic and
governmental questions, that must be met
and solved. They must be met with a rec-
ognition of a new spirit.
160 FANEUIL HALL
It is a time to keep our faith in our State,
our Nation, our institutions, and in each
other. Doing that, the war will be won in
the field and won in civil life at home.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS GOVERNOR 161
XXIV
FROM INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS
GOVERNOR
JANUARY 2, 1919
You are coming to a new legislative ses-
sion under the inspiration of the greatest
achievements in all history. You are be-
holding the fulfilment of the age-old prom-
ise, man coming into his own. You are to
have the opportunity and responsibility of
reflecting this new spirit in the laws of the
most enlightened of Commonwealths. We
must steadily advance. Each individual
must have the rewards and opportunities
worthy of the character of our citizenship,
a broader recognition of his worth and a
larger liberty, protected by order — and
always under the law. In the promotion of
human welfare Massachusetts happily may
not need much reconstruction, but, like all
living organizations, forever needs contin-
162 INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS GOVERNOR
uing construction. What are the lessons
of the past? How shall they be applied to
these days of readjustment? How shall we
emerge from the autocratic methods of war
to the democratic methods of peace, rais-
ing ourselves again to the source of all our
strength and all our glory — sound self-
government?
It is your duty not only to reflect public
opinion, but to lead it. Whether we are to
enter a new era in Massachusetts depends
upon you. The lessons of the war are plain.
Can we carry them on into peace? Can we
still act on the principle that there is no
sacrifice too great to maintain the right?
Shall we continue to advocate and practise
thrift and industry? Shall we require un-
swerving loyalty to our country? These are
the foundations of all greatness.
Let there be a purpose in all your legisla-
tion to recognize the right of man to be well
born, well nurtured, well educated, well
employed, and well paid. This is no gospel
INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS GOVERNOR 163
of ease and selfishness, or class distinction,
but a gospel of effort and service, of uni-
versal application.
Such results cannot be secured at once,
but they should be ever before us. The
world has assumed burdens that will bear
heavily on all peoples. We shall not escape
our share. But whatever may be our trials,
however difficult our tasks, they are only
the problems of peace, and a victorious
peace. The war is over. Whatever the call
of duty now we should remember with grat-
itude that it is nothing compared with the
heavy sacrifice so lately made. The genius
and fortitude which conquered then can
not now fail.
164 DEATH OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
XXV
STATEMENT ON THE DEATH OF
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
THE people of our Commonwealth have
learned with profound sorrow of the death
of Theodore Roosevelt. No other citizen
of the Nation would have brought in so
large a degree the feeling of a common
loss. During the almost eight years he was
President, the people came to see in him a
reflection of their ideals of the true Ameri-
canism.
He was the advocate of every good cause.
He awakened the moral purpose of the Na-
tion and raised the standard of public serv-
ice. He appealed to the imagination of
youth and satisfied the judgment of matur-
ity. In him Massachusetts saw an exponent
of her own ideals.
In token of the love and reverence which
all the people bore him, I urge that the na-
DEATH OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 165
tional and state flags be flown at half-mast
throughout the Commonwealth until after
his funeral, and that, when next the people
gather for public worship, his loss be marked
with proper ceremony.
166 LINCOLN DAY PROCLAMATION
XXVI
LINCOLN DAY PROCLAMATION
JANUABY 30, 1919
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
By His Excellency Calvin Coolidge, Governor
A PROCLAMATION
FIVESCORE and ten years ago that Divine
Providence which infinite repetition has
made only the more a miracle sent into the
world a new life, destined to save a nation.
No star, no sign, foretold his coining. About
his cradle all was poor and mean save only
the source of all great men, the love of a
wonderful woman. When she faded way in
his tender years, from her deathbed in hum-
ble poverty she dowered her son with great-
ness. There can be no proper observance of
a birthday which forgets the mother. Into
his origin as into his life men long have
looked and wondered. In wisdom great, but
in humility greater, in justice strong, but in
LINCOLN DAY PROCLAMATION 167
compassion stronger, he became a leader of
men by being a follower of the truth. He
overcame evil with good. His presence filled
the Nation. He broke the might of oppres-
sion. He restored a race to its birthright.
His mortal frame has vanished, but his
spirit increases with the increasing years,
the richest legacy of the greatest century.
Men show by what they worship what
they are. It is no accident that before the
great example of American manhood our
people stand with respect and reverence.
And in accordance with this sentiment our
laws have provided for a formal recogni-
tion of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln,
for in him is revealed our ideal, the hope
of our country fulfilled.
Now, therefore, by the authority of Mas-
sachusetts, the 12th day of February is set
apart as
LINCOLN DAY
and its observance recommended as befits
the beneficiaries of his life and the admirers
168 LINCOLN DAY PROCLAMATION
of his character, in places of education and
worship wherever our people meet one with
another.
Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, this
30th day of January, in the year of Our Lord one
thousand nine hundred and nineteen, and of the
independence of the United States of America the
one hundred and forty-third.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
By his Excellency the Governor,
ALBERT P. LANGTBY,
Secretary of the Commonwealth.
God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
SPEECHES OF INTRODUCTION 169
XXVII
INTRODUCING HENRY CABOT LODGE
AND A. LAWRENCE LOWELL AT THE
DEBATE ON THE LEAGUE OF
NATIONS SYMPHONY HALL
MARCH 19, 1919
WE meet here as representatives of a great
people to listen to the discussion of a great
question by great men. All America has
but one desire, the security of the peace by
facts and by parchment which her brave
sons have wrought by the sword. It is a
duty we owe alike to the living and the
dead.
Fortunate is Massachusetts that she has
among her sons two men so eminently
trained for the task of our enlightenment, a
senior Senator of the Commonwealth and
the President of a university established
in her Constitution. Wherever statesmen
gather, wherever men love letters, this day's
170 LODGE-LOWELL DEBATE
discussion will be read and pondered. Of
these great men in learning, and experience,
wise in the science and practice of govern-
ment, the first to address you is a Senator
distinguished at home and famous every-
where — Henry Cabot Lodge.
[After Senator Lodge spoke he introduced
President Lowell:]
The next to address you is the President
of Harvard University — an educator re-
nowned throughout the world, a learned
student of statesmanship, endowed with a
wisdom which has made him a leader of
men, truly a Master of Arts, eminently a
Doctor of Laws, a fitting representative of
the Massachusetts domain of letters —
Abbott Lawrence Lowell.
VETO OF SALARY INCREASE 171
XXVIII
VETO OF SALARY INCREASE
To THE HONORABLE SENATE AND HOUSE
OF REPRESENTATIVES:
In accordance with the duty imposed by
the Constitution, a bill entitled, "An act to
establish the compensation of the members
of the General Court," being House No.
1629, is herewith returned without approval.
This bill raises the salaries of members
from $1000 to $1500, an increase of fifty
per cent, and is retroactive. It is necessary
to decide whether the Commonwealth can
well afford this additional tax and whether
any public benefit would accrue from it.
These are times that require careful
scrutiny of public expenditure. The burden
of taxes resulting from war is heavy. The
addition of $142,000 to the expense of the
Commonwealth hi perpetuity is not to be
undertaken but upon proven necessity.
172 VETO OF SALARY INCREASE
Service in the General Court is not oblig-
atory but optional. It is not to be under-
taken as a profession or a means of liveli-
hood. It is a voluntary public service. In
accord with the principles of our democratic
institutions a compensation has been given
in order that talent for service rather than
the possession of property might be the
standard of membership. There is no man
of sufficient talent in the Commonwealth
so poor that he cannot serve for a session,
which averages about five months, and five
days each week, at a salary of $1000 —
and travel allowance of $2.50 for each mile
between his home and the State House.
This is too clear for argument. There is no
need to consider those who are too rich to
serve for this sum. It would be futile to dis-
cuss whether their services are worth more
or less than this, as that is not here the ques-
tion. Membership in the General Court is
not a job. There are services rendered to the
Commonwealth by senators and represen-
VETO OF SALARY INCREASE 173
tatives that are priceless. For the searching
out of great principles on which legislation
is based there is no adequate compensation.
If value for services were the criterion,
there would be 280 different salaries. When
membership is sought as a means of live-
lihood, legislation will pass from a public
function to a private enterprise. Men do
not serve here for pay. They seek work and
places of responsibility and find in that
seeking, not in their pay, their honor.
The realities of life are not measured by
dollars and cents. The skill of the physi-
cian, the divine eloquence of the clergyman,
the courage of the soldier, that which we
call character in all men, are not matters of
hire and salary. No person was ever hon-
ored for what he received. Honor has
been the reward for what he gave. Public
acclaim and the ceremonious recognition
paid to returning heroes are not on account
of their government pay but of the service
and sacrifice they gave their country. The
174 VETO OF SALARY INCREASE
place each member of the General Court
will hold in the estimation of his constitu-
ents will never depend on his salary, but on
the ability and integrity with which he does
his duty; not on what he receives, but on
what he gives; and only out of the bounti-
f ulness of his own giving will his constitu-
ents raise him to power. Not by indulging
himself, but by denying himself, will he
reach success.
It is because the General Court has rec-
ognized these principles in its past history
that it has secured its high place as a legis-
lative body. This act disregards all this and
will ever appear to be an undertaking by
members to raise their own salaries. The
fact that many were thinking of the needs
of others will remain unknown. Appear-
ances cannot be disregarded. Those in whom
is placed the solemn duty of caring for
others ought to think of themselves last or
their decisions will lack authority. There is
apparent a disposition to deny the disinter-
VETO OF SALARY INCREASE 175
estedness and impartiality of government.
Such charges are the result of ignorance
and an evil desire to destroy our institu-
tions for personal profit. It is of infinite im-
portance to demonstrate that legislation is
used not for the benefit of the legislator, but
of the public.
The General Court of Massachusetts is a
legislative body noted for its fairness and
ability. It has no superior. Its critics have
for the most part come from the outside
and have most frequently been those who
have approached it with the purpose of se-
curing selfish desires of their clients or them-
selves. A long familiarity with it increases
respect for it. It is charged with expressing
the abiding convictions and conscience of
the people of the Commonwealth. The most
solemn obligation placed by the Constitu-
tion on the Executive is the power to veto
its actions. In all matters affecting it the
General Court is entitled to his best judg-
ment and carefully considered opinion.
176 VETO OF SALARY INCREASE
Anything less would be a mark of disre-
spect and disloyalty to its members. That
judgment and opinion, arrived at after a
wide counsel with members and others, is
here expressed, ha the light of an obligation
which is not personal, "faithfully and im-
partially to discharge and perform" the
duties of a public office.
FLAG DAY PROCLAMATION 177
XXIX
FLAG DAY PROCLAMATION
MAT 26, 1919
WORKS which endure come from the soul
of the people. The mighty in their pride
walk alone to destruction. The humble
walk hand in hand with Providence to im-
mortality. Their works survive. When the
people of the Colonies were defending their
liberties against the might of kings, they
chose their banner from the design set in
the firmament through all eternity. The
flags of the great empires of that day are
gone, but the Stars and Stripes remain. It
pictures the vision of a people whose eyes
were turned to the rising dawn. It repre-
sents the hope of a father for his posterity.
It was never flaunted for the glory of roy-
alty, but to be born under it is to be a child
of a king, and to establish a home under it
is to be the founder of a royal house. Alone
178 FLAG DAY PROCLAMATION
of all flags it expresses the sovereignty of
the people which endures when all else
passes away. Speaking with their voice it
has the sanctity of revelation. He who lives
under it and is loyal to it is loyal to truth
and justice everywhere. He who lives under
it and is disloyal to it is a traitor to the hu-
man race everywhere. What could be saved
if the flag of the American Nation were to
perish?
In recognition of these truths and out of
a desire born of a purpose to defend and per-
petuate them, the Commonwealth of Mas-
sachusetts has by ordinance decreed that
for one day of each year their importance
should be dwelt upon and remembered.
Therefore, in accordance with that author-
ity, the anniversary of the adoption of the
national flag, the 14th day of June next, is
set apart as
FLAG DAY
and it is earnestly recommended that it be
FLAG DAY PROCLAMATION 179
observed by the people of the Common-
wealth by the display of the flag of our
country and in all ways that may testify
to their loyalty and perpetuate its glory.
180 AMHERST COLLEGE
XXX
AMHERST COLLEGE COMMENCEMENT
JUNE 18, 1919
To the son of any college, although he does
not make his connection with his college
a profession, a return of Commencement
Day recalls many memories. It is likely
also, after nearly a quarter of a century, to
cause some reflections. It is, I suppose, to
give tongue to such memories and reflec-
tions that after-dinner speaking is provided.
After all due allowance for change of per-
spective, going to college was a greater
event twenty-five years ago than it is to-
day. My own memories are not yet ancient
enough to warrant their recalling. The
greater events of that day are too recent to
need to be related.
But I should fail in my duty and neglect
my deep conviction if I did not declare that
in my day there was no better place to edu-
COMMENCEMENT 181
cate a young man. Most of them came with
a realization that their coming meant a sac-
rifice at home. They may have lacked a
proficiency in the arts of the drawing room
which sometimes brought a smile; but no
competitor met the Amherst men of that
day on the athletic field or in the post-
graduate school with a smile that did not
soon come off. They had their pranks and
sprees, but they had the ideals of a true
manhood. They were moved with a serious
purpose. He who had less lacked place
among them. They are come and gone from
the campus, those men of the early nineties,
and with them went the power to com-
mand.
Those were days that represented espe-
cially the spirit of President Seelye. Under
his brilliant and polished successor the Fac-
ulty changes were few. There was Profes-
sor Wood, the most accomplished intellec-
tual hazer of freshmen. There was Professor
Gibbons, who was strong enough in Greek
183 AMHERST COLLEGE
derivation so that every second-year man
.soon had a clear conception of the meaning
of sophomore. After demonstrating clearly
that on the negative side the derivation of
i
" contiguity " was not "con " and " tiguity ,"
he advised those who could not with equal
clearness demonstrate its derivation on the
positive side to look it up. There were
Morse and Frink, Richardson, Hitchcock,
Estey, Crowell, Tyler, and Garman. All
these and more are gone. The living, no
less eminent, I need not recall. As a teach-
ing force, as an inspirer of youth, for train-
ing men how to think, that faculty has had
.and will have nowhere any superior.
" So passed that pageant."
The college of to-day has taken on a new
life, a new activity. Military training then
was a spectacle for the Massachusetts Agri-
cultural College. To-day Amherst welcomes
its returning soldiers, and but a little time
jsince divested itself of the character of a
military camp to resume the wonted garb
COMMENCEMENT 183
of peace. Yet it is and has been the same
institution, — a college of the liberal arts.
In this so-called practical age Amherst has
chosen for her province the most practical
of all, — the culture and the classics of all
time.
Civilization depends not only upon the
knowledge of the people, but upon the use
they make of it. If knowledge be wrong-
fully used, civilization commits suicide.
Broadly speaking, the college is not to edu-
cate the individual, but to educate society.
The individual may be ignorant and vicious.
If society have learning and virtue, that
will sustain him. If society lacks learning
and virtue, it perishes. Education must
give not only power but direction. It must
minister to the whole man or it fails.
Such an education considered from the
position of society does not come from sci-
ence. That provides power alone, but not
direction. Give a savage tribe firearms and
a distillery, and their members will extermi-
184 AMHERST COLLEGE
nate each other. They have science all right,
but misuse it. They lack ideals. These
young men that we welcome back with so
much pride did not go forth to demonstrate
their faith in science. They did not offer
their lives because of their belief in any
rule of mathematics or any principle of
physics or chemistry. The laws of the
natural world would be unaffected by their
defeat or victory. No; they were defend-
ing their ideals, and those ideals came from
the classics.
This is preeminently true of the culture
of Greece and Rome. Patriotism with them
was predominant. Their heroes were those
who sacrificed themselves for their country,
from the three hundred at Thermopylae to
Horatius at the bridge. Their poets sang of
the glory of dying for one's native land. The
orations of Demosthenes and Cicero are
pitched in the same high strain. The philos-
ophy of Plato and Aristotle and the Greek
and Latin classics were the foundation of the
COMMENCEMENT 185
Renaissance. The revival of learning was
the revival of Athens and Sparta and of the
Imperial City. Modern science is their prod-
uct. To be included with the classics are
modern history and literature, the philos-
ophers, the orators, the statesmen, and
poets, — Milton and Shakespeare, Lowell
and Whittier, — the Farewell Address, the
Reply to Hayne, the Speech at Gettysburg,
— it is all these and more that I mean by
the classics. They give not only power to the
intellect, but direct its course of action.
The classic of all classics is the Bible.
I do not underestimate schools of science
and technical arts. They have a high and
noble calling in ministering to mankind.
They are important and necessary. I am
pointing out that in my opinion they do not
provide a civilization that can stand with-
out the support of the ideals that come
from the classics.
The conclusion to be derived from this
position is that a vocational or technical
186 AMHERST COLLEGE
education is not enough. We must have
every American citizen well grounded in
the classical ideals. Such an education will
not unfit him for the work of the world.
Did those men in the trenches fight any less
valiantly, did they shrink any more from
the hardships of war, when a liberal culture
had given a broader vision of what the
great conflict meant? The discontent in
modern industry is the result of a too nar-
row outlook. A more liberal culture will
reveal the importance and nobility of the
work of the world, whether in war or peace.
It is far from enough to teach our citi-
zens a vocation. Our industrial system will
break down unless it is humanized. There is
greater need for a liberal culture that will
develop the whole man in the whole body of
our citizenship. The day when a college edu-
cation will be the portion of all may not be
so far distant as it seems.
We live in a republic. Our Government
is exercised through representatives. Their
COMMENCEMENT 187
course of action is a very accurate reflec-
tion of public opinion. Where shall that
be formed and directed unless from the
influences, direct and indirect, that come
from our institutions of learning. The laws
of a republic represent its ideals. They are
founded upon public opinion, and public
opinion in America up to the present time
has drawn its inspiration from the classics.
They tell us that Waterloo was won on the
football fields of Rugby and Eton. The Ger-
man war was won by the influence of clas-
sical ideals. As a teacher of the classics, as
a maker of public opinion, as a source of
wise laws, as the herald of a righteous vic-
tory, — Amherst College stands on a foun-
dation which has remained unchanged
through the ages. May there be in all her
sons a conviction that with her abides Him
who changes not.
188 HARVARD UNIVERSITY
XXXI
HARVARD UNIVERSITY COMMENCE-
MENT
JUNE 19, 1919
No college man who has ever glanced at the
Constitution of Massachusetts is likely to
miss or forget the generous references there
made to Harvard University. It may need
a closer study of that instrument, which is
older than the American Constitution, to
realize the full significance of those most
enduring of guaranties that could then be
imposed in behalf of Massachusetts insti-
tutions.
The convention which framed our Con-
stitution has as its president James Bow-
doin, a son of Harvard. He was a man of
great strength of character and cast an in-
fluence for good upon the deliberations of
his day worthy of a place in history more
conspicuous than is generally accorded to
COMMENCEMENT 189
him. He had as his colleague on the floor no
less a person than John Adams. It is not
necessary in this presence to designate his
alma mater. There were others of impor-
tance, but these represented the type of
thought that prevailed.
In that noble Declaration of Rights the
principles of freedom and equality were
first declared. Following this is set forth the
right of religious liberty and the duty of
citizens to support places of religious wor-
ship and instruction; and in the Frame of
Government, after establishing the Uni-
versity, there is given to legislators and
magistrates a mandate forever to cherish
and support the cause of education and in-
stitutions of learning. These were the dec*
laration of broad and liberal policies. They
are capable of being combined, for in fact
they declare that teaching, whether it be
by clergy or laity, is of an importance that
requires it to be surrounded with the same
safeguards and guaranties as freedom and
190 HARVARD UNIVERSITY
equality. In fact the Constitution declares
that "wisdom and knowledge, as well as
virtue, diffused generally among the body
of the people, are necessary for the preser-
vation of their rights and liberties." John
Adams and James Bowdoin knew that
freedom was the fruit of knowledge. Their
conclusionsVere drawn from the directions
of Holy Writ — "Come, know the truth,
and it shall make you free."
These principles there laid down with so
much solemnity have now the same bind-
ing force as in those revolutionary days
when they were recognized and proclaimed.
I am not unaware that they are old. What-
ever is, is old. It is but our own poor appre-
hension of it that is new. It would be well
if they were re-apprehended. It is not well
if the great diversity of modern learning
has made the truth so little of a novelty
that it lacks all reverence.
The days of the Revolution were days of
reverence and of applied reverence. Teach-
COMMENCEMENT 191
ing was to a considerable extent in the hands
of the clergy. Institutions of learning were
presided over by clergymen. The teacher
spoke with the voice of authority. He was
treated with deference. He held a place in
the community that was not only secure
but high. The rewards of his services were
comparatively large. He was a leader of the
people. From him came the inspiration of
liberty. It was in the meeting-houses that
the Revolution was framed.
This dual character little exists now, but
the principle is the same. Teaching is the
same high calling, but how lacking now in
comparative appreciation. The compensa-
tion of many teachers and clergymen is far
less than the pay of unskilled labor. The
salaries of college professors are much less
than like training and ability would com-
mand in the commercial world. We pay a
good price to bank men to guard our money.
We compensate liberally the manufacturer
and the merchant; but we fail to appre-
192 HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ciate those who guard the minds of our
youth or those who preside over our con-
gregations. We have lost our reverence for
the profession of teaching and bestowed it
upon the profession of acquiring.
This will have such a reaction as might be
expected. Some of the clergy, seeing their
own rewards are disproportionate, will draw
the conclusion that all rewards are dispro-
portionate, that the whole distribution of
wealth is unsound; and turn to a belief in
and an advocacy of some kind of a socialis-
tic state. Some of our teachers, out of a like
discontent, will listen too willingly to rev-
olutionary doctrines which have not orig-
inated in meeting-houses but are the im-
portations of those who lack nothing but
the power to destroy all that our civiliza-
tion holds dear. Unless these conditions are
changed, these professions will not attract
to their services young men of the same
comparative quality of ability and charac-
ter that in the past they commanded.
COMMENCEMENT 193
In our pursuit of prosperity we have
forgotten and neglected its foundations. It
is true that many of our institutions of
learning are well endowed and have spa-
cious buildings, but the plant is not enough.
Many modern schoolhouses put to shame
any public buildings that were erected in
the Colonies. I am directing'attention to the
comparative position of the great mass of
teachers and clergymen. They are not prop-
erly appreciated or properly paid. They
have provided the foundations of our lib-
erties. The importance of their position
cannot be overestimated. They have been
faithful though neglected; but a state which
neglects or refuses to support any class will
soon find that such class neglects and re-
fuses to support it. The remedy lies in part
with private charity, in part with govern-
ment action; but it lies wholly with pub-
lic opinion. Private charity must worthily
support its clergymen and the faculty and
instructors of our higher institutions of
194 HARVARD UNIVERSITY
learning; and the Government must ade-
quately reward the teachers in its schools.
In the great bound forward which has been
taken in a material way, these two noble
professions, the pillars of liberty and equal-
ity, have been neglected and left behind.
They must be reestablished. They must be
restored to the place of reverence they
formerly held.
The profession of teaching has come
down to us with a sanction of antiquity
greater than all else. So far back as we can
peer into human history there has stood a
priesthood that has led its people intellec-
tually and morally. Teaching is leading.
The fundamental needs of humanity do not
change. They are constant. These influ-
ences so potent in the development of
Massachusetts cannot be exchanged for a
leadership that is bred of the market-place,
to her advantage. We must turn our eyes
from what is to what ought to be. The men
of the day of John Adams and James Bow-
COMMENCEMENT 195
doin had a vision that looked into the heart
of things. They led a revolution that swept
on to a successful conclusion. They estab-
lished a nation that has endured until its
flag is the ancient among the banners of the
earth. Their counsel will not be mocked.
The men of that day almost alone in his-
tory brought a Revolution to its objective.
Not only that, they reached it in such a con-
dition that it there remained. The counter-
attack of disorder failed entirely to dis-
lodge it. Their success lay entirely in the
convictions they had. No nation can reject
these convictions and remain a republic.
Anarchy or despotism will overwhelm it.
Massachusetts established Harvard Col-
lege to be a defender of righteous convic-
tions, of reverence for truth and for the
heralds of truth. The purpose set forth in
the Constitution is clear and plain. It recog-
nizes with the clear conviction of men not
thinking of themselves that the cause of
America is the cause of education, but of
196 HARVARD UNIVERSITY
education with a soul, a trained intellect but
guided ever by an enlightened conscience.
We of our day need to recognize with the
same vision that when these fail, America
has failed.
PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY 197
XXXII
PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY
SEPTEMBER 1, 1919
THE laws of our country have designated
the first Monday of each September as
Labor Day. It is truly an American day, for
it was here that for the first time in history
a government was founded on a recognition
of the sovereignty of the citizen which has
irresistibly led to a realization of the dig-
nity of his occupation. It is with added pro-
priety that this day is observed this year.
For the first time in five years it comes at a
time when the issue of world events makes
it no longer doubtful whether the American
conception of work as the crowning glory
of men free and equal is to prevail over
the age-old European conception that work
is the badge of the menial and the inferior.
The American ideal has prevailed on Eu-
ropean battle-fields through the loyalty,
devotion, and sacrifice of American labor.
198 PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY
The duty of citizenship in this hour is to
strive to maintain and extend that ideal at
home.
The past five years have been a time of
rapid change and great progress for the
American people. Not only have the hours
and conditions of labor been greatly im-
proved, but wages have increased about one
hundred per cent. There has been a great
economic change for the better among all
wage-earners.
We have known that political power was
with the people, because they have the
votes. We have generally supposed that
economic power was not with the people,
because they did not own the property.
This supposition, probably never true, is
growing more and more to be contrary to
the facts. The great outstanding fact in the
economic life of America is that the wealth
of the Nation is owned by the people of the
Nation. The stockholders of the great cor^
porations run into the hundreds of thou-
PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY
199
sands, the small tradesmen, the thrifty
householders, the tillers of the soil, the
depositors in savings banks, and the now
owners of government bonds, make a num-
ber that includes nearly our entire people.
This would be illustrated by a few Massa-
chusetts examples from figures which were
reported in 1918:
Number of Stockholders
Railroads
Street railways
Telephone
Western Union Telegraph. . .
40,485
17,527
49,688
9,360
Number of Employees
Railroads
Street railways
Telephone
Western Union Telegraph. . .
117,060
20,604
25,000
11,471
2,065
59,140
Savings bank depositors. . . . 2,491,646
Railroad, street railway, and
telephone bonds held by
savings banks and savings
departments of trust com-
panies $267,795,636
Savings bank deposits $1,022,342,583
200 PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY
Money is pouring into savings banks at
the rate of $275,000 each working day.
Comment on these figures is unnecessary.
There is, of course, some reduplication, but
in these four public service enterprises there
are in Massachusetts almost twice as many
direct owners as there are employees. Two
persons out of three have money in the
savings bank — men, women, and children.
There is this additional fact: more than one
quarter of the stupendous sum of over a
billion dollars of the savings of nearly two
and a half million savings depositors is in-
vested in railroad, street railway, and tele-
phone securities.
With these examples in mind it would
appear that our problem of economic jus-
tice in Massachusetts, where we live and for
which alone we can legislate, is not quite so
simple as assuming that we can take from
one class and give to another class. We are
reaching and maintaining the position in
this Commonwealth where the property
PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY 201
class and the employed class are not sepa-
rate, but identical. There is a relationship of
interdependence which makes their inter-
ests the same in the long run. Most of us
earn our livelihood through some form of
employment. More and more of our people
are in possession of some part of the wages
of yesterday, and so are investors. This is
the ideal economic condition.
The great aim of our Government is to
protect the weak — to aid them to become
strong. Massachusetts is an industrial State.
If her people prosper, it must be by that
means in some of its broad avenues. How
can our people be made strong? Only as
they draw their strength from our indus-
tries. How can they do that? Only by build-
ing up our industries and making them
strong. This is fundamental. It is the place
to begin. These are the instruments of all
our achievement. When they fail, all fails.
When they prosper, all prosper. Work-
men's compensation, hours and conditions
302 PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY
of labor are cold consolations, if there be no
employment. And employment can be had
only if some one finds it profitable. The
greater the profit, the greater the wages.
This is one of the economic lessons of the
war. It should be remembered now when
taxes are to be laid, and in the period of
readjustment. Taxes must be measured by
the ability to meet them out of surplus in-
come. Industry must expand or fail. It
must show a surplus after all payments of
wages, taxes, and returns to investors. Con-
scription can call once, then all is over. Just
requirements can be met again and again
with ever-increasing ability.
Justice and the general welfare go hand
in hand. Government had to take over our
transportation interests in order to do such
justice to them that they could pay their
employees and carry our merchandise. They
have been so restricted lest they do harm
that they became unable to do good. Their
surplus was gone, and we New Englanders
PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY 203
had to go without coal. Seeing now more
clearly than before the true interests of wage-
earner, investor, and the public, which is
the consumer, we shall hereafter be willing
to pay the price and secure the benefits of
justice to all these coordinate interests.
We have met the economic problem of
the returning service men. They have been
assimilated into our industrial life with lit-
tle delay and with no disturbance of exist-
ing conditions. The day of adversity has
passed. The American people met and over-
came it. The day of prosperity has come.
The great question now is whether the
American people can endure their prosper-
ity. I believe they can. The power to pre-
serve America is in the same hands to-day
that it was when the German army was al-
most at the gates of Paris. That power is
with the people themselves; not one class,
but all classes ; not one occupation, but all oc-
cupations; not one citizen, but all citizens.
During the past five years we have heard
204 PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY
many false prophets. Some were honest,
but unwise; some plain slackers; a very
few were simply public enemies. Had their
counsels prevailed, America would have
been destroyed. In general they appealed to
the lower impulses of the people, for in their
ignorance they believed the most powerful
motive of this Nation was a sodden selfish-
ness. They said the war would never affect
us; we should confine ourselves to making
money. They argued for peace at any price.
They opposed selective service. They sought
to prevent sending soldiers to Europe. They
advocated peace by negotiation. They
were answered from beginning to end by
the loyalty of the American workingmen
and the wisdom of their leaders. That
loyalty and that wisdom will not desert us
now. The voices that would have lured us
to destruction were unheeded. All counsels
of selfishness were unheeded, and America
responded with a spirit which united our
people as never before to the call of duty.
PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY 205
Having accomplished this great task,
having emerged from the war the strongest,
the least burdened nation on earth, are we
now to fail before our lesser task? Are we
to turn aside from the path that has led
us to success? Who now will set selfishness
above duty? The counsel that Samuel Gom-
pers gave is still sound, when he said in
effect, "America may not be perfect. It has
the imperfections of all things human. But
it is the best country on earth, and the man
who will not work for it, who will not fight
for it, and if need be die for it, is unworthy
to live in it."
Happily, the day when the call to fight
or die is now past. But the day when it is
the duty of all Americans to work will re-
main forever. Our great need now is for
more of everything for everybody. It is not
money that the nation or the world needs
to-day, but the products of labor. These
products are to be secured only by the
united efforts of an entire people. The
206 PLYMOUTH, LABOR DAY
trained business man and the humblest
workman must each contribute. All of us
must work, and in that work there should
be no interruption. There must be more
food, more clothing, more shelter. The
directors of industry must direct it more
efficiently, the workers in industry must
work in it more efficiently. Such a course
saved us in war; only such a course can pre-
serve us in peace. The power to preserve
America, with all that it now means to the
world, all the great hope that it holds for
humanity, lies in the hands of the people.
Talents and opportunity exist. Application
only is uncertain. May Labor Day of 1919
declare with an increased emphasis the
resolution of all Americans to work for
America.
WESTFIELD 207
xxxm
WESTFIELD
SEPTEMBER 3, 1919
WE come here on this occasion to honor
the past, and in that honor render more se-
cure the present. It was by such men as
settled Westfield, and two hundred and fifty
years ago established by law a chartered
and ordered government, that the founda-
tions of Massachusetts were laid. And it
was on the foundations of Massachusetts
that there began that training of the people
for the great days that were to come, when
they were prepared to endorse and support
the principles set out in the Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution of the
United States of America, and the Eman-
cipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln.
Here were planted the same seeds of right-
eousness victorious which later flourished
with such abundance at Saratoga, at Gettys-
208
WESTFIELD
burg, and at the second battle of the Marne.
Stupendous results, the product of a people
working with an everlasting purpose.
While celebrating the history of West-
field, this day has been set apart to the mem-
ory of one of her most illustrious sons,
General William Shepard. To others are
assigned the history of your town and the
biography of your soldier. Into those par-
ticulars I shall not enter. But the prin-
ciples of government and of citizenship
which they so well represent, and nobly
illustrate, will never be untimely or un-
worthy of reiteration.
The political history of Westfield has
seen the success of a great forward move-
ment, to which it contributed its part, in
establishing the principle, that the indi-
vidual in his rights is supreme, and that
"governments derive their just powers
from the consent of the governed." It is
the establishment of liberty, under an or-
dered form of government, in this ancient
WESTFIELD 209
town, by the people themselves, that to-day
draws us here in admiration of her achieve-
ments. When we turn to the life of her
patriot son we see that he no less grandly
illustrated the principle, that to such gov-
ernment, so established, the people owe an
allegiance which has the binding power of
the most solemn obligation.
There is such a disposition in these days
to deny that our Government was formed
by, or is now in control of, the people, that
a glance at the history of the days of Gen-
eral Shepard is peculiarly pertinent and
instructive.
The Constitution of Massachusetts, with
its noble Declaration of Rights,was adopted
in 1780. Under it we still live with scarce
any changes that affect the rights of the
people. The end of the Revolutionary War
was 1783. Shays's Rebellion was in 1787.
The American Constitution was ratified
and adopted in 1788. These dates tell us
what the form of government was in this
period.
810 WESTFIELD
If there are any who doubt that our in-
stitutions, formed in those days, did not
establish a peoples' government, let them
study the action of the Massachusetts Con-
vention which ratified the Federal Consti-
tution in 1788. Presiding over it was the
popular patriot Governor John Hancock.
On the floor sat Samuel Adams, who had
been the father of the Revolution, preemi-
nent champion of the liberty of the people.
Such an influence had he, that his assertion
of satisfaction, was enough to carry the
delegates. Like a majority of the members
he came opposed to ratification. Having
totally thrown off the authority of foreign
power, they came suspicious of all outside
authority. Besides there were eighteen
members who had taken part in Shays's
Rebellion, so hostile were they to the execu-
tion of all law. Mr. Adams was finally con-
vinced by a gathering of the workingmen
among his constituents, who exercised their
constitutional right of instructing their rep-
WESTFIELD 211
resentatives. Their opinion was presented
to him by Paul Revere. "How many me-
chanics were at the Green Dragon when
these resolutions were passed?" asked Mr.
Adams. "More, sir, than the Green Dragon
could hold." "And where were the rest?"
"In the streets, sir." "And how many were
in the streets?" "More than there are stars
in the sky." This is supposed to have con-
vinced the great Massachusetts tribune that
it was his duty to support ratification.
There were those, however, who dis-
trusted the Constitution and distrusted its
proponents. They viewed lawyers and men
of means with great jealousy. Amos Sin-
gletary expressed their sentiments in the
form of an argument that has not ceased
to be repeated in the discussion of all
public 'affairs. "These lawyers," said he,
"and men of learning and moneyed men
that talk so finely and gloss over matters
so smoothly, to make us poor illiterates
swallow the pill, expect to get into Con-
WESTFIELD
gress themselves. They mean to be man-
agers of the Constitution. They mean to
get all the money into their hands and
then they will swallow up us little folk, like
the great Leviathan, Mr. President: yes,
just like the whale swallowed up Jonah."
In the convention sat Jonathan Smith,
a farmer from Lanesboro. He had seen
Shays's Rebellion in Berkshire. There had
been no better example of a man of the
people desiring the common good.
"I am a plain man," said Mr. Smith,
"and am not used to speak in public, but
I am going to show the effects of anarchy,
that you may see why I wish for good gov-
ernment. Last winter people took up arms,
and then, if you went to speak to them, you
had the musket of death presented to your
breast. They would rob you of your property,
threaten to burn your houses, oblige you
to be on your guard night and day. Alarms
spread from town to town, families were
broken up; the tender mother would cry,
WESTFIELD 213
'Oh, my son is among them! What shall I
do for my child? ' Some were taken captive;
children taken out of their schools and
carried away. . . . How dreadful was this!
Our distress was so great that we should
have been glad to snatch at anything that
looked like a government. . . . Now, Mr.
President, when I saw this Constitution, I
found that it was a cure for these disorders.
I got a copy of it, and read it over and over.
... I did not go to any lawyer, to ask his
opinion; we have no lawyer in our town,
and we do well enough without. My hon-
ourable old daddy there (pointing to Mr.
Singletary) won't think that I expect to be
a Congressman, and swallow up the liber-
ties of the people. I never had any post, nor
do I want one. But I don't think the worse
of the Constitution because lawyers, and
men of learning, and moneyed men are
fond of it. I am not of such a jealous make.
They that are honest men themselves are
not apt to suspect other people. . . . Brother
214 WESTFIELD
farmers, let us suppose a case, now. Sup-
pose you had a farm of 50 acres, and your
title was disputed, and there was a farm of
5000 acres joined to you that belonged to a
man of learning, and his title was involved
in the same difficulty; would you not be
glad to have him for your friend, rather
than to stand alone in the dispute? Well,
the case is the same. These lawyers, these
moneyed men, these men of learning, are
all embarked in the same cause with us, and
we must all sink or swim together. Shall we
throw the Constitution overboard because
it does not please us all alike? Suppose two
or three of you had been at the pains to
break up a piece of rough land and sow it
with wheat: would you let it lie waste be-
cause you could not agree what sort of a
fence to make? Would it not be better to
put up a fence that did not please every
one's fancy, rather than keep disputing
about it until the wild beasts came in and
devoured the crop? Some gentlemen say,
WESTFIELD 215
Don't be in a hurry; take time to consider.
I say, There is a time to sow and a time to
reap. We sowed our seed when we sent men
to the Federal Convention, now is the time
to reap the fruit of our labour; and if we do
not do it now, I am afraid we shall never
have another opportunity."
There spoke the common sense of the
common man of the Commonwealth. The
counsel of the farmer from the country,
joined with the resolutions of the working-
men, from the city, carried the convention
and the Constitution was ratified. In the
light of succeeding history, who shall say,
that it was not the voice of the people,
speaking with the voice of Infinite Author-
ity?
The attitude of Samuel Adams, William
Shepard, Jonathan Smith and the working-
men of Boston toward government, is wor-
thy of our constant emulation. They had
not hesitated to take up arms against tyr-
anny in the Revolution, but having estab-
216 WESTFIELD
lished a government of the people they
were equally determined to defend and sup-
port it. They hated the usurper whether
king, or Parliament, or mob, but they
bowed before the duly constituted author-
ity of the people.
When the question of pardoning the con-
victed leaders of the rebellion came up,
Adams opposed it. "In monarchies," he
said, "the crime of treason and rebellion
may admit of being pardoned or lightly
punished; but the man who dares to rebel
against the laws of a republic ought to
suffer death." We are all glad mercy pre-
vailed and pardon was granted. But the
calm judgment of Samuel Adams, the lover
of liberty, "the man of the town meeting"
whose clear vision, taught by bitter expe-
rience, saw that all usurpation is tyranny,
must not go unheeded now. The authority
of a just government derived from the con-
sent of the governed, has back of it a Power
that does not fail.
WESTFIELD 217
All wars bring in their trail great hard-
ships. They existed in the day of General
Shepard. They exist now. Having set up a
sound government in Massachusetts, having
secured their independence, as the result of
a victorious war, the people expected a sea-
son of easy prosperity. t2 that they were
temporarily disappointed. Some rebelling,
were overthrown. The adoption of the Fed-
eral Constitution brought relief and pros-
perity.
Success has attended the establishment
here of a government of the people. We of
this day have just finished a victorious war
that has added new glory to American arms.
We are facing some hardships, but they are
not serious. Private obligations are not so
large as to be burdensome. Taxes can be
paid. Prosperity abounds. But the great
promise of the future lies in the loyalty and
devotion of the people to their own Govern-
ment. They are firm in the conviction of the
fathers, that liberty is increased only by
218 WESTFIELD
increasing the determination to support a
government of the people, as established in
this ancient town, and defended by its
patriotic sons.
A PROCLAMATION 219
XXXIV
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
By His Excellency Calvin Coolidge, Governor
A PROCLAMATION
THE entire State Guard of Massachusetts
has been called out. Under the Constitution
the Governor is the Commander-in-Chief
thereof by an authority of which he could
not if he chose divest himself. That com-
mand I must and will exercise. Under the
law I hereby call on all the police of Boston
who have loyally and in a never-to-be-for-
gotten way remained on duty to aid me in
the performance of my duty of the restora-
tion and maintenance of order in the city
of Boston, and each of such officers is re-
quired to act in obedience to such orders as
I may hereafter issue or cause to be issued.
I call on every citizen to aid me in the
maintenance of law and order.
Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, this
eleventh day of September, in the year of our Lord
A PROCLAMATION
one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the
one hundred and forty-fourth.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
By His Excellency the Governor,
ALBERT P. LANGTRY
Secretary of the Commonwealth
God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
AN ORDER
XXXV
AN ORDER
BOSTON, September 11, 1919
To EDWIN TL CUKTIS,
As you are Police Commissioner of the
City of Boston,
Executive Order No. 1
You are hereby directed, for the purpose
of assisting me in the performance of my
duty, pursuant to the proclamation issued
by me this day, to proceed in the perform-
ance of your duties as Police Commissioner
of the city of Boston under my command
and in obedience to such orders as I shall
issue from time to time, and obey only such
orders as I may so issue or transmit.
CALVIN COOIIDGE
Governor of Massachusetts
A TELEGRAM
XXXVI
A TELEGRAM
BOSTON, MASS., Sept. 14, 1919
MR. SAMUEL GOMPERS
President American Federation of Labor, New York
City, N.Y.
Replying to your telegram, I have al-
ready refused to remove the Police Com-
missioner of Boston. I did not appoint him.
He can assume no position which the courts
would uphold except what the people have
by the authority of their law vested in him.
He speaks only with their voice. The right
of the police of Boston to affiliate has al-
ways been questioned, never granted, is
now prohibited. The 'suggestion of Presi-
dent Wilson to Washington does not apply
to Boston. There the police have remained
on duty. Here the Policemen's Union left
their duty, an action which President Wil-
son characterized as a crime against civili-
zation. Your assertion that the Commis-
A TELEGRAM 223
sioner was wrong cannot justify the wrong
of leaving the city unguarded. That fur-
nished the opportunity, the criminal ele-
ment furnished the action. There is no
right to strike against the public safety by
anybody, anywhere, any time. You ask
that the public safety again be placed in
the hands of these same policemen while
they continue in disobedience to the laws of
Massachusetts and in their refusal to obey
the orders of the Police Department. Nine-
teen men have been tried and removed.
Others having abandoned their duty, their
places have, under the law, been declared
vacant on the opinion of the Attorney-
General. I can suggest no authority outside
the courts to take further action. I wish to
join and assist in taking a broad view of
every situation. A grave responsibility rests
on all of us. You can depend on me to sup-
port you in every legal action and sound
policy. I am equally determined to defend
the sovereignty of Massachusetts and to
224 A TELEGRAM
maintain the authority and jurisdiction
over her public officers where it has been
placed by the Constitution and law of her
people.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
Governor of Massachusetts
A PROCLAMATION 225
XXXVII
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
By His Excellency Calvin Coolidge, Governor
A PROCLAMATION
THERE appears to be a misapprehension as
to the position of the police of Boston. In
the deliberate intention to intimidate and
coerce the Government of this Common-
wealth a large body of policemen, urging
all others to join them, deserted their posts
of duty, letting in the enemy. This act of
theirs was voluntary, against the advice of
their well wishers, long discussed and pre-
meditated, and with the purpose of ob-
structing the power of the Government to
protect its citizens or even to maintain its
own existence. Its success meant anarchy.
By this act through the operation of the law
they dispossessed themselves. They went
out of office. They stand as though they
had never been appointed.
A PROCLAMATION
Other police remained on duty. They are
the real heroes of this crisis. The State
Guard responded most efficiently. Thou-
sands have volunteered for the Guard and
the Militia. Money has been contributed
from every walk of life by the hundreds of
thousands for the encouragement and re-
lief of these loyal men. These acts have
been spontaneous, significant, and decisive.
I propose to support all those who are sup-
porting their own Government with every
power which the people have entrusted
to me.
There is an obligation, inescapable, no
less solemn, to resist all those who do not
support the Government. The authority of
the Commonwealth cannot be intimidated
or coerced. It cannot be compromised. To
place the maintenance of the public secur-
ity in the hands of a body of men who have
attempted to destroy it would be to flout
the sovereignty of the laws the people have
made. It is my duty to resist any such pro-
A PROCLAMATION
posal. Those who would counsel it join
hands with those whose acts have threat-
ened to destroy the Government. There is
no middle ground. Every attempt to pre-
vent the formation of a new police force is a
blow at the Government. That way treason
lies. No man has a right to place his own
ease or convenience or the opportunity of
making money above his duty to the State.
This is the cause of all the people. I call
on every citizen to stand by me in execut-
ing the oath of my office by supporting the
authority of the Government and resisting
all assaults upon it.
, Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, this
twenty-fourth day of September, in the year of our
Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, and
of the Independence of the United States of America
the one hundred and forty-fourth.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
By His Excellency the Governor,
HERBERT H. BOYNTON
Deputy, Acting Secretary of the Commonwealth
God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
228 HOLY CROSS COLLEGE
XXXVIII
HOLY CROSS COLLEGE
JUNE 25, 1919
To come from the press of public affairs,
where the practical side of life is at its flood,
into these calm and classic surroundings,
where ideals are cherished for their own
sake, is an intense relief and satisfaction.
Even in the full flow of Commencement
exercises it is apparent that here abide the
truth and the servants of the truth. Here
appears the fulfillment of the past in the
grand company of alumni, recalling a his-
tory already so thick with laurels. Here is
the hope of the future, brighter yet in the
young men to-day sent forth.
"The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads
Celestial armory, shield, helm and spear,
Hung bright, with diamond flaming and with gold."
In them the dead past lives. They repre-
sent the college. They are the college. It is
HOLY CROSS COLLEGE 229
not in the campus with its imposing halls
and temples, nor in the silent lore of the
vast library or the scientific instruments of
well-equipped laboratories, but in the men
who are the incarnation of all these, that
your college lives. It is not enough that
there be knowledge, history and poetry,
eloquence and art, science and mathemat^
ics, philosophy and ethics, ideas and ideals.
They must be vitalized. They must be fashr-
ioned into life. To send forth men who live
all these is to be a college. This temple of
learning must be translated into human
form if it is to exercise any influence over
the affairs of mankind, or if its alumni are
to wield the power of education.
A great thinker and master of the expres^
sion of thought has told us:
"It was before Deity, embodied in a hu-
man form, walking among men, partaking
of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms,
weeping over their graves, slumbering in
the manger, bleeding on the cross, that
230 HOLY CROSS COLLEGE
the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the
doubts of the Academy, and the pride of
the Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor,
and the swords of thirty Legions, were
humbled in the dust."
If college-bred men are to exercise the
influence over the progress of the world
which ought to be their portion, they must
exhibit in their lives a knowledge and a
learning which is marked with candor, hu-
mility, and the honest mind.
The present is ever influenced mightily
by the past. Patrick Henry spoke with
great wisdom when he declared to the Con-
tinental Congress, "I have but one lamp by
which my feet are guided and that is the
lamp of experience." Mankind is finite. It
has the limits of all things finite. The
processes of government are subject to the
same limitations, and, lacking imperfec-
tions, would be something more than hu-
man. It is always easy to discover flaws,
and, pointing them out, to criticize. It is
HOLY CROSS COLLEGE 231
not so easy to suggest substantial remedies
or propose constructive policies. It is char-
acteristic of the unlearned that they are for-
ever proposing something which is old, and,
because it has recently come to their own
attention, supposing it to be new. Into this
error men of liberal education ought not to
fall. The forms and processes of govern-
ment are not new. They have been known,
discussed, and tried in all their varieties
through the past ages. That which America
exemplifies in her Constitution and sys-
tem of representative government is the
most modern, and of any yet devised gives
promise of being the most substantial and
enduring.
It is not unusual to hear arguments
against our institutions and our Govern-
ment, addressed particularly to recent ar-
rivals and the sons of recent arrivals to our
shores. They sometimes take the form of a
claim that our institutions were founded
long ago; that changed conditions require
HOLY CROSS COLLEGE
that they now be changed. Especially is it
claimed by those seeking such changes that
these new arrivals and men of their race
and ideas had no hand in the making of our
country, and that it was formed by those
who were hostile to them and therefore they
owe it no support. Whatever may be the
condition in relation to others, and what-
ever ignorance and bigotry may imagine,
such arguments do not apply to those of the
race and blood so prominent in this assem-
blage. To establish this it were but neces-
sary to cite eleven of the fif ty-five signers of
the Declaration of Independence and re-
call that on the roll of Washington's gen-
erals were Sullivan, Knox, Wayne, and the
gallant son of Trinity College, Dublin, who
fell at Quebec at the head of his troops, —
Richard Montgomery. But scholarship has
answered ignorance. The learned and patri-
otic research of men of the education of
Dr. James J. Walsh and Michael J. O'Brien,
the historian of the Irish American Society,
HOLY CROSS COLLEGE
233
has demonstrated that a generous portion
of the rank and file of the men who fought
in the Revolution and supported those who
framed our institutions was not alien to
those who are represented here. It is no
wonder that from among such that which
is American has drawn some of its most
steadfast defenders.
In these days of violent agitation schol-
arly men should reflect that the progress
of the past has been accomplished not by
the total overthrow of institutions so much
as by discarding that which was bad and
preserving that which was good ; not by rev-
olution but by evolution has man worked
out his destiny. We shall miss the central
feature of all progress unless we hold to
that process now. It is not a question of
whether our institutions are perfect. The
most beneficent of our institutions had their
beginnings in forms which would be par-
ticularly odious to us now. Civilization be-
gan with war and slavery; government
234 HOLY CROSS COLLEGE
began in absolute despotism; and religion
itself grew out of superstition which was
oftentimes marked with human sacrifices.
So out of our present imperfections we
shall develop that which is more perfect.
But the candid mind of the scholar will
admit and seek to remedy all wrongs with
the same zeal with which it defends all
rights.
From the knowledge and the learning of
the scholar there ought to be developed an
abiding faith. What is the teaching of all
history? That which is necessary for the
welfare and progress of the human race
has never been destroyed. The discoverers
of truth, the teachers of science, the makers
of inventions, have passed to their last
rewards, but their works have survived.
The Phoenician galleys and the civilization
which was born of their commerce have
perished, but the alphabet which that peo-
ple perfected remains. The shepherd kings
of Israel, the temple and empire of Solo-
HOLY CROSS COLLEGE 235
mon, have gone the way of all the earth,
but the Old Testament has been preserved
for the inspiration of mankind. The ark of
the covenant and the seven-pronged candle-
stick have passed from human view; the
inhabitants of Judea have been dispersed
to the ends of the earth, but the New Tes-
tament has survived and increased in its
influence among men. The glory of Athens
and Sparta, the grandeur of the Impe-
rial City, are a long-lost memory, but the
poetry of Homer and Virgil, the oratory of
Demosthenes and Cicero, the philosophy
of Plato and Aristotle, abide with us for-
evermore. Whatever America holds that
may be of value to posterity will not pass
away.
The long and toilsome processes which
have marked the progress of the past can-
not be shunned by the present generation
to our advantage. We have no right to ex-
pect as our portion something substan-
tially different from human experience in
236 HOLY CROSS COLLEGE
the past. The constitution of the universe
does not change. Human nature remains
constant. That service and sacrifice which
have been the price of past progress are the
price of progress now.
This is not a gospel of despair, but of
hope and high expectation. Out of many
tribulations mankind has pressed steadily
onward. The opportunity for a rational
existence was never before so great. Bless-
ings were never so bountiful. But the evi-
dence was never so overwhelming as now
that men and nations must live rationally
or perish.
The defenses of our Commonwealth are
not material but mental and spiritual. Her
fortifications, her castles, are her institu-
tions of learning. Those who are admitted
to the college campus tread the ramparts
of the State. The classic halls are the arm-
ories from which are furnished forth the
knights in armor to defend and support our
liberty. For such high purpose has Holy
HOLY CROSS COLLEGE 237
Cross been called into being. A firm foun-
dation of the Commonwealth. A defender of
righteousness. A teacher of holy men. Let
her turrets continue to rise, showing forth
"the way, the truth and the light" —
" In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
'And with their mild persistence urge man's arch
To vaster issues."
238 REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
XXXIX
REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON
OCTOBER 4, 1919
ANCIENT custom crystallized to law has
drawn us here. We come to renew our pledge
publicly at the altar of our country. We
come in the light of history and of reason.
We come to take counsel both from ex-
perience and from imagination. Over us
shines a glorious past, before us lies a
promising future. Around us is a renewed
determination deep and solemn that this
Commonwealth of ours shall endure.
The period since our last election has
been one of momentous events. Within
its first week the victorious advance of
America and her allies terminated in the
armistice of November eleventh. The power
of organized despotisms had been proven
to be inferior to the power of organized re-
REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION 239
publics. Reason had again triumphed over
absolutism. The " still small voice " of the
moral law was seen to be greater than the
might of kings. The world appeal to duty
triumphed over the world appeal to selfish-
ness. It always will. There will be far-reach-
ing results from all this which no one can
now foresee. But some things are apparent.
The power of the people has been revealed.
The worth of the individual man shines
forth with an increased glory. But most
significant of all, for it lies at the foundation
of all civilization and all progress, was the
demonstration that the citizens of the great
republics of the earth possess the power
which they dare to use, of maintaining
among all men the orderly processes of re-
vealed law.
These are no new doctrines in Massa-
chusetts. For nearly three hundred years
she has laid her course according to these
principles, extending the blessings which
arise from them to her citizens, ever ready
£40 REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
to defend them with her treasure and her
blood. In this the past year has been no
exception.
In recognition of the long-established
policy of making this Commonwealth first
in humanitarian legislation, the General
Court enacted a law providing for reduc-
ing a fifty-four hour week for women
and minors to a forty-eight hour week. It
passed the weavers' specification bill. The
allowance under the workmen's compensa-
tion law was increased. Local option was
provided on the question of a twelve-hour
day for firemen. Authority was granted cor-
porations to give their employees a voice in
their management. Representatives of the
employees have been appointed to the
Board of Trustees of great public service
corporations. Profiteering has been made
a crime. A special commission of which
the chairman is Brigadier-General John H.
Sherburne was established to deal with the
problem of the high cost of living — with
REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION 241
power which has been effective in reducing
the prices of the necessaries of life. No
other State has taken any effective measure.
The compensation of public employees
has been increased. The entire public serv-
ice of the Commonwealth has been reorgan-
ized in accordance with the constitutional
amendment into twenty departments. In
caring for her service men Massachusetts
led all the States of the Nation in relief and
in assistance, besides voting the stupen-
dous sum of twenty million dollars, not
as compensation, but as recognition of the
gratitude due those who had represented
us in the great war. The educational oppor-
tunities of the youth of the State have been
improved. All of these acts of great impor-
tance, which are of course only representa-
tive of the character of current legislation,
had the executive approval. There has been
not only a sympathetic but a very practical
attitude toward the ideal expressed in my
inaugural address, that *there is a right to
REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
be well born, well reared, well educated,
well employed, and well paid. We shall not
be shaken in the mature determination to
promote these policies. The ancient faith
of Massachusetts in the worth of her citi-
zens, the cause of great solicitude for the
welfare of each individual, will remain un-
diminished.
The many uncertainties in transporta-
tion which are State, Nation, and world
wide, sent our street railway problems to an
expert commission which will report to a
special session of the General Court. It is
recognized that the rate of fare necessary
to pay for the service rendered has in some
instances become prohibitive. Some roads
and portions of roads have been closed
down. There must be relief. But such relief
must be in accord with sound economic
principles. What the public has the public
must pay for. From this there is no escape.
Under private, or public, ownership or
operation this rule will be the same. We
REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION 243
must face the facts and restore this neces-
sary service to the people in such a form
that they can meet its costs. In meeting
this issue, not hysterically, not with dem-
agogy, but calmly, with candor, applying
an adequate remedy to ascertained facts,
Massachusetts, as usual, will lead all the
other States of the Nation.
That agitation and unrest which has been
characteristic of the whole world since the
close of the war has had some manifesta-
tions here. There is a natural desire in every
human mind to seek better conditions. Such
a desire is altogether praiseworthy. There
must, however, be discrimination in the
methods employed. Wholesale criticism of
everybody and everything does not neces-
sarily exhibit statesmanlike qualities, and
may not be true. Not all those who are
working to better the condition of the peo-
ple are Bolsheviki or enemies of society.
Not all those who are attempting to con-
duct a successful business are profiteers.
244 REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
But unreasonable criticism and agitation
for unreasonable remedies will avail noth-
ing. We, in common with the whole world,
are suffering from a shortage of materials.
There is but one remedy for this, increased
production. We need to use sparingly what
we have and make more. No progress will
be made by shouting Bolsheviki and profi-
teers. What we need is thrift and industry.
Let everybody keep at work. Profitable
employment is the death blow to Bolshe-
vism and abundant production is disaster
to the profiteer. Our salvation lies in put-
ting forth greater effort, in manfully assum-
ing our own burdens, rather than in enter-
taining the pleasing delusion that they can
be shifted to some other shoulders. Those
who attempt to lead people on in this ex-
pectation only add to their burdens and
their dangers.
The people of Boston have recently seen
the result of agitation and unrest in its po-
lice force. The policy of that department,
REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION 245
established by an order of former Com-
missioner O'Meara and adopted by a rule
which has the force of law by the present
Commissioner Curtis, prohibited a police
union from affiliating with an outside
union. In spite of this such a union was
formed and persisted in with acknowledged
and open defiance of the rules and of the
counsel and almost entreaties of the officers
of the department. Such disobedience con-
tinuing, the leaders were cited for trial on
charges and heard with their counsel before
the Commissioner. After thorough consid-
eration, and opportunity again to obey the
rules, they were found guilty. In order to
give a chance to recant sentence was sus-
pended. Shortly after, three fourths of the
police force abandoned their posts and re-
fused further to perform their duties. Dur-
ing the next few hours, there was destruc-
tion of property in the city but happily no
loss of life.
Meantime there had been various efforts
246 REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
to save the situation. Some urged me to
remove the Commissioner, some to request
him to alter his course. To all these I had
to reply that I had no authority whatever
over his actions and could not lawfully in-
terfere with him. It was my duty to sup-
port him in the execution of the law and
that I should do. I was glad to confer with
any one and give my help where it was
sought. The Commissioner was appointed
by my predecessor in office for a term of
years. I could with almost equal propriety
interfere in the decisions of the Supreme
Court.
To restore order, I at once and by pre-
arrangement with him and the Commis-
sioner, offered to the Mayor to call out the
State Guard. At his request I did so, im-
mediately beginning restoring obedience to
the law. On account of the public danger,
I called on the Commissioner to aid me in
the execution of my duties of keeping order,
and issued a proclamation to that effect.
REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION 247
To various suggestions that the police
be permitted to return I replied that the
Attorney-General had ruled that by law
that could not be done and while I had no
power to appoint, discharge, or reinstate, I
was opposed to placing the public security
again in the keeping of this body of men.
There is an obligation to forgive but it does
not extend to the unrepentant. To give
them aid and comfort is to support their
evil doing and to become what is known in
law as an accessory after the fact. A gov-
ernment which does that is a reproach to
civilization and will soon have on its hands
the blood of its citizens.
The response to the appeal to support
the Government of Massachusetts in sus-
taining law and order was instantaneous.
It came from the State Guard, from volun-
teers for police, and the militia, from con-
tributions gathered among all classes now
reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars,
from the loyal police of Boston, from all
248 REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
quarters of the Commonwealth and be-
yond. These forces may all be dissipated,
they may be defeated, but while I am en-
trusted with the office of their Comman-
der-in-Chief they will not be surrendered.
Over them and over every other law-abid-
ing citizen has gone up the white flag of
Massachusetts. Who is there that by com-
promising the authority of her laws dares
to haul down that flag? I have resisted and
propose to continue in resistance to such
action.
This issue is perfectly plain. The Gov-
ernment of Massachusetts is not seeking to
resist the lawful action or sound policy of
organized labor. It has time and again
passed laws for the protection and encour-
agement of trade unions. It has done so
under my administration upon my recom-
mendation to a greater extent than in any
previous year. In that policy it will con-
tinue. It is seeking to prevent a condition
which would at once destroy all labor
REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
unions and all else that is the foundation of
civilization by maintaining the authority
and sanctity of the law. When that goes all
goes. It costs something but it is the cheap-
est thing that can be bought; it causes
some inconvenience but it is the foundation
of all convenience, the orderly execution of
the laws.
The people understand this thoroughly.
They know that the laws are their laws and
speak their voice. They know that this Gov-
ernment is their Government founded on
their will, administered by their representa-
tives. Disobedience to it is disobedience to
the people. They know that the property
of the Commonwealth is their property.
Destruction of it destroys their substance.
The public security is their security. When
that is gone they are in deadly peril. And
knowing this the people have a determina-
tion to support the Government with a
resolution that is unchanging.
It is my purpose to maintain the Govern-
250 REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
ment of Massachusetts as it was founded
by her people, the protector of the rights of
all but subservient to none. It is my pur-
pose to maintain unimpaired the authority
of her laws, her jurisdiction, her peace, her
security. This ancient faith of Massachu-
setts which became the great faith of
America, she reestablished in her Constitu-
tion before the army of Washington had
gained our independence, declaring for "a
government of laws and not of men." In
that faith she still abides. Let him chal-
lenge it who dares. All who love Massachu-
setts, who believe in America, are bound to
defend it. The choice lies between living
under coercion and intimidation, the forces
of evil, or under the laws of the people,
orderly, speaking with their settled con-
victions, the revelation of a divine au-
thority.
WILLIAMS COLLEGE 251
XL
WILLIAMS COLLEGE
OCTOBER 17, 1919
THERE speaks here with the voice of im-
mortality one who loved Massachusetts.
On every side arise monuments to that en-
during affection bred not of benefits re^-
ceived but of services rendered, of sacrifices
made, that the province of Massachusetts
Bay might live enlightened and secure. A bit
of parchment has filled libraries. A few hun-
dred dollars has enriched generations. The
spirit of a single liberty-loving soldier has
raised up a host that has shaken the earth
with its martial tread, laying low the hills
but exalting the valleys. Here Colonel
Ephraim Williams still executes his will,
still disposes of his patrimony, still leads
the soldiers of the free to an enduring vic-
tory, and with a power greater than the
252 WILLIAMS COLLEGE
sword stands guard on the frontier marches
of the Commonwealth.
Honor compels that honor be recognized.
In compliance with that requirement this
day has been set apart by this institution
of letters in testimony of the merit of her
sons. Nearly one half of her living alumni
were under the direct service of the Nation
in the great war. Into all branches of the
service, civil and military, they went from
the alumni, from the class rooms, from the
faculty, up to President Garfield himself,
who served as Director of the Fuel Adminis-
tration. From America and her allies has
come the highest of recognition, conferred
by citation, awards, and decorations. Their
individual deeds of valor I shall not relate.
They are known to all. Advisedly I say that
they have not been surpassed among men.
Their heroism was no less heroic because
it was unconscious there or because of be-
fitting modesty it is unostentatious here.
There was yet a courage unequaled by the
WILLIAMS COLLEGE 253
most momentous dangers which were met
by those now marked with fame and a
capacity in the others which would have
matched equal events with equal fortitude.
In the most grateful recognition of all this,
to the living and the dead, by their Alma
Mater the Commonwealth of Massachu-
setts reverently joins.
But this day, if it is truly to represent
the spirit of this college, means more than
a glorification of the past. It was by a stern
determination to discharge the duties of
the present that Ephraim Williams pro-
vided for a future filled with a glory that
must not yet be termed complete. His
thoughts were not on himself nor on mate-
rial things. Had he chosen to inscribe his
name upon a monument of granite or of
bronze it would have gone the way of all
the earth. Enlightening the soul of his fel-
low man he made his mark which all eter-
nity cannot erase. A soldier, he did not
"put his trust
In reeking tube and iron shard"
254 WILLIAMS COLLEGE
to save his countrymen, but like Solomon
chose first knowledge and wisdom and to
his choice has likewise been added a splen-
dor of material prosperity.
Earth's great lesson is written here. In
it all men may read the interpretation of
the founder of this college, of the meaning
of America, of the motive high and true
which has inspired her soldiers. Not un-
mindful of a desire for economic justice but
scorning sordid gain, not seeking the spoils
of war but a victory of righteousness, they
came, subordinating the finite to the in-
finite, placing their trust in that which does
not pass away. This precept heretofore ob-
served must not be abandoned now. A de-
sire for the earth and the fullness thereof
must not lure our people from their truer
selves. Those who seek for a sign merely
in a greatly increased material prosperity,
however worthy that may be, disappointed
through all the ages, will be disappointed
now. Men find their true satisfaction in
WILLIAMS COLLEGE 255
something higher, finer, nobler than all
that. We sought no spoils from war; let
us seek no spoil from peace. Let us remem-
ber Babylon and Carthage and that city
which her people, flushed with purple pride,
dared call Eternal.
This college and her sons have turned
their eyes resolutely toward the morning.
Above the roar of reeking strife they hear
the voice of the founder. Their actions
have matched their vision. They have seen.
They have heard. They have done. I thank
you for receiving me into their company,
so romantic, so glorious, and for enrolling
me as a soldier in the legion of Colonel
Ephraim Williams.
256 CONCERNING TEACHERS' SALARIES
XLI
CONCERNING TEACHERS' SALARIES
OCTOBER 29, 1919
A Letter to the Mayor of Boston
MY DEAR MR. MAYOR:
It will be with a good deal of satisfaction
that I cooperate with you and any other
cities of Massachusetts for the purpose of
increasing the pay of those engaged in the
teaching of the youth of our Common-
wealth. It has become notorious that the
pay for this most important function is
much less than that which prevails in com-
mercial life and business activities.
Roger Ascham, the teacher to Queen
Elizabeth, about 1565, in discussing this
question, wrote: "And it is pity that com-
monly more care is had, yea and that among
very wise men, to find out rather a cunning
man for their horse than a cunning man for
their children. They say nay in word, but
CONCERNING TEACHERS' SALARIES 257
they do so in deed. For to the one they will
gladly give a stipend of two hundred crowns
by the year and are loath to offer to the
other two hundred shillings. God that sit-
teth in Heaven laugheth their choice to
scorn and rewardeth their liberality as it
should. For he suffereth them to have tame
and well-ordered horses, but wild and un-
fortunate children, and therefore in the end
they find more pleasure in their horse than
comfort in their children."
In an address which I made at a Harvard
College Commencement I undertook to di-
rect attention to the inadequate compen-
sation paid to our teachers, whether in the
universities, public schools, or the pulpits
of the land. It is perfectly clear that more
money must be provided for these purposes,
which surpass in their importance all our
other public activities, both by government
appropriation and by private charity.
It is significant that the number of teach-
ers who are in training in our normal schools
258 CONCERNING TEACHERS' SALARIES
has decreased in the past twelve or fifteen
years from three thousand to two thousand,
while the number of students in colleges
and technical schools has increased. The
people of the Commonwealth cannot sup-
port the Government unless the Govern-
ment supports them.
The condition which was described by
the teacher of Queen Elizabeth, that greater
compensation is paid for the unimportant
things than is paid for training the intel-
lectual abilities of our youth, might exist
in the sixteenth century, but it ought not
to exist in the twentieth century.
Fortunately for us, the sterling character
of teachers of all kinds has kept them at
their task even though we have failed to
show them due appreciation, and up to the
present time the public has suffered little.
But unless a change is made and a new
policy adopted, the cause of education will
break down. It will either become a trade
for those little fitted for it or be abandoned
CONCERNING TEACHERS' SALARIES 259
altogether, instead of remaining the noblest
profession, which it has been and ought to
be.
There are some things that are funda-
mental. In the sixteenth century the voice
of the people was little heard. If the sover-
eign had wisdom, that might suffice. But in
the twentieth century the people are sov-
ereign. What they think determines every
question of civilization. Unless they are
well trained, well informed, and well in-
structed, unless a proper value is put on
knowledge and wisdom, the value of all
material things will be lost.
There is now no pains too great, no cost
too high, to prevent or diminish the duty
enjoined by the Constitution of the Com-
monwealth that wisdom and knowledge, as
well as virtue, be generally diffused among
the body of the people.
This important subject ought to be con-
sidered and a remedy provided at the spe-
cial session of the General Court.
260 STATEMENT TO THE PRESS
XLH
STATEMENT TO THE PRESS
4
ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1919
MY thanks are due to the millions of my
fellow citizens of Massachusetts. I offer
them freely, without undertaking to spec-
ify, to all who have supported the great
cause of the supremacy of the law. The
heart of the people has proven again sound
and true. No misrepresentation has blinded
them, no sophistry has turned them. They
have listened to the truth and followed it.
They have again disappointed those who
distrusted them. They have turned away
from those who sought to play upon their
selfishness. They have justified those who
trusted them. They have justified America.
The attempt to appeal to class prejudice
has failed. The men of Massachusetts are
not labor men, or policemen, or union men,
or poor men, or rich men, or any other class
STATEMENT TO THE PRESS 261
of men first; they are Americans first. The
wage-earners have vindicated themselves.
They have shown by their votes that they
resent trying to use them for private inter-
ests, or to employ them to resist the opera-
tion of the Government. They are for the
Government. They are against those who
are against the Government. American in-
stitutions are safe in their hands. Some of
those who have posed as their leaders and
argued that the wage-earners were patriotic
because those leaders told them to be may
well now inquire whether the case did not
stand the other way about. It begins to
look as if those who attempt to lead the
wage-earners must first show that they
themselves are patriotic if they are to
have any following. The patriotism of some
alleged leaders was not the cause but
the effect of the patriotism of the wage-
earners.
Three words tell the result. Massachu-
setts is American. The election will be a
STATEMENT TO THE PRESS
welcome demonstration to the Nation and
to people everywhere who believe that lib-
erty can only be secured by obedience to
law.
SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE 263
XLHI
SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1919, 8 P.M
REVELATION has not ceased. The strength
of a righteous cause has not grown less. The
people of Massachusetts are patriotic be-
fore they are partisan, they are not for men
but for measures, not for selfishness but for
duty, and they will support their Govern-
ment. Revelation has not ceased and faith
in men has not failed. They cannot be in-
timidated, they cannot be coerced, they
cannot be deceived, and their sovereignty
is not for sale.
When this campaign is over it will be a
rash man who will again attempt to further
his selfish interests by dragging a great
party name in the mire and seeking to gain
the honor of office by trafficking with dis-
order. The conduct of public affairs is not
a game. Responsible office does not go to
264 SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE
the crafty. Governments are not founded
upon an association for public plunder but
on the cooperation of men wherein each is
seeking to do his duty.
The past five years have been like an
earthquake. They have shaken the institu-
tions of men to their very foundations. It
has been a time of searchings and question-
ings. It has been a time of great awaken-
ings. There has been an overpowering reso-
lution among men to make things better.
Despotisms have been falling. Republics
have been rising. There has been rebellion
everywhere against usurped authority.
With all that America has been entirely
sympathetic. There has been bred in the
blood through generations a great sympa-
thy for all peoples struggling to be free. We
have a deep conviction that "resistance to
tyranny is obedience to law." And on that
conviction we have stood for three cen-
turies. Time and experience have but
strengthened our belief that it is sound.
SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE 265
But like all rules of action it only applies
to the conditions it describes. All authority
is not usurped authority. Any government
is not tyranny. These are the counterfeits.
There are no counterfeits of the unreal. It
is only of the real and true that men seek
to pass spurious imitations.
There are among us a great mass of peo-
ple who have been reared for generations
under a government of tyranny and oppres-
sion. It is ingrained in their blood that there
is no other form of government. They are
disposed and inclined to think our institu-
tions partake of the same nature as these
they have left behind. We know they are
wrong. They must be shown they are
wrong.
There is a just government. There are
righteous laws. We know the formula by
which they are produced. The principle is
best stated in the immortal Declaration of
Independence to be "the consent of the
governed." It is from that source our Gov-
266 SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE
ernment derives its just powers and pro-
mulgates its righteous laws. They are the
will of the people, the settled conviction
derived from orderly deliberation, that take
on the sanctity ascribed to the people's
voice. Along with the binding obligation to
resist tyranny goes the other admonition,
that "obedience to law is liberty," — such
law and so derived.
These principles, which I have but
lightly sketched, are the foundation of
American institutions, the source of Amer-
ican freedom and the faith of any party en-
titled to call itself American. It constitutes
truly the rule of the people. It justifies and
sanctifies the authority of our laws and the
obligation to support our Government. It
is democracy administered through repre-
sentation.
There are only two other choices, an-
archy or despotism — Russia, present and
past. For the most part human existence
has been under the one or the other of
SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE 267
these. Both have failed to minister to the
highest welfare of the people. Unless Amer-
ican institutions can provide for that wel-
fare the cause of humanity is hopeless. Un-
less the blessings of prosperity, the rewards
of industry, justice and liberty, the satis-
faction of duty well done, can come under
a rule of the people, they cannot come at
all. We may as well abandon hope and,
yielding to the demands of selfishness, each
take what he can.
We had hoped these questions were set-
tled. But nothing is settled that evil and
selfish men can find advantage for them-
selves in overthrowing. We must eternally
smite the rock of public conscience if the
waters of patriotism are to pour forth. We
must ever be ready to point out the success
of our country as justification of our deter-
mination to support it.
No one can deny that we are in the midst
of an abounding prosperity. No one can
deny that this prosperity is well dis-
\
268 SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE
tributed; especially is this true of the wage-
earner. Industrially, commercially, finan-
cially, America has been a success. The
wealth of Massachusetts is increasing rap-
idly. There are large deposits going into her
savings institutions, during banking hours
with each tick of the clock more than
$12.50, with each minute more than $750,
with each day over $270,000. Wages and
hours of labor were never so favorable. We
have attained a standard of living among
our people the like of which never before
existed on earth.
Intellectually our progress compares with
our prosperity. The opportunity for educa-
tion is not only large, but it is well used.
The school is everywhere. Ignorance is a
disgrace. The turrets of college and univer-
sity dot the land. Their student bodies
were never so large. Science and invention,
literature and art flourish.
There is higher standard of justice in
all the affairs of life than in the past. Our
SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE 269
commercial transactions are on a higher
plane. There is a moral standard that runs
through all the avenues of our life that has
lifted it into a new position and gives to
men a keener sense of honor in all things.
There has come to be a new realization of
the brotherhood of man, a new significance
to religion. The war aroused a new patri-
otism, and revealed the strength of our
moral power.
The issue in Massachusetts is whether
these conditions can endure. Will men real-
ize their blessing'and exhibit the resolution
tc support and defend the foundation on
which they rest? Having saved Europe are
we ready to surrender America? Having
beaten the foe from without are we to fall a
victim to the foe from within?
All of this is put in question by the issue
of this campaign. That one fundamental is-
sue is the support of the Government in its
determination to maintain order. On that
all of these opportunities depend.
£70 SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE
There can be no material prosperity
without order. Stores and banks could not
open. Factories could not run, railways
could not operate. What was the value of
plate glass and goods, the value of real es-
tate in Boston at three o'clock, A.M., Sep-
tember 10? Unless the people vote to sus-
tain order that value is gone entirely.
Business is ended.
On order depends all intellectual prog-
ress. Without it all schools close, libraries
are empty, education stops. Disorder was
the forerunner of the Dark Ages.
Without order the moral progress of the
people would be lost. With the schools
would go the churches. There could be no
assemblages for worship, no services even
for the departed, piety would be swallowed
up in viciousness.
I have understated the result of disorder.
Man has not the imagination, the ability to
overstate it. There are those who aim to
bring about exactly this result. I propose at
SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE 271
all times to resist them with all the power
at the command of the Chief Executive of
Massachusetts.
Naturally the question arises, what shall
we do to defend our birthright? In the first
place everybody must take a more active
part in public affairs. It will not do for men
to send, they must go. It is not enough to
draw a check. Good government cannot be
bought, it has to be given. Office has great
opportunities for doing wrong, but equal
chance for doing right. Unless good citizens
hold office bad citizens will. People see the
office-holder rather than the Government*
Let the worth of the office-holder speak the
worth of the government. The voice of the
people speaks by the voice of the individ-
ual. Duty is not collective, it is personal.
Let every inhabitant make known his de-
termination to support law and order.
That duty is supreme.
That the supremacy of the law, the pres-
ervation of the Government itself by the
272 SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE
maintenance of order, should be the issue of
this campaign was entirely due to circum-
stances beyond my control. That any one
should dare to put in jeopardy the stability
of our Government for the purpose of se-
curing office was to me inconceivable. That
any one should attempt to substitute the
will of any outside organization for the
authority conferred by law upon the repre-
sentatives of the people had never occurred
to me. But the issue arose by action of
some of the police of Boston and it was my
duty to meet it. I shall continue to admin-
ister the law of all the people.
I should have been pleased to make this
campaign on the record of the past year. I
should have been pleased to show what the
march of progress had been under the peo-
ple's government, what action had been
taken for the relief of those who toil with
their hands as well as their heads , — and the
record was never more alluring, — what has
been done to advance the business and com-
SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE 273
mercial interests of this great industrial
Commonwealth, what has promoted public
health, what has assisted in agricultural de-
velopment, the progress made in providing
transportation, the increased opportunity
given our youth for education. In particular
I should have desired to point out the great
pride Massachusetts has in her war record
and the abundant way she has shown her
gratitude for her service men and women,
surpassing every other State. All this is a
record not of promises, but of achievement.
It is one in which the voters of the Com-
monwealth may well take a deep satisfac-
tion. It is there, it stands, it cannot be
argued away. No deception can pervert it.
It endures.
All these are the result of ordered liberty
— the result of living under the law. It is
the great desire of Massachusetts to con-
tinue such legislation of progress and hu-
manity. Those who are attempting to
wrench the scepter of authority from the
274 SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE
representatives of the people, to subvert
the jurisdiction of her laws, are the enemies
not only of progress, but of all present
achievement, not only of what we hope for,
but of what we have.
This is the cause of all the people, es-
pecially of the weak and defenseless. Their
only refuge is the protection of the law.
The people have come to understand this.
They are taking the deciding of this elec-
tion into their own hands regardless of
party. If the people win who can lose?
They are awake to the words of Daniel
Webster, "nothing will ruin the country if
the people themselves will undertake its
safety; and nothing can save it if they
leave that safety in any hands but their
own."
My fellow citizens of Massachusetts, to
you I commend this cause. To you who
have added the glory of the hills and plains
of France to the glory of Concord and
Bunker Hill, to you who have led when
SPEECH AT TREMONT TEMPLE 275
others faltered, to you again is given the
leadership. Grasp it. Secure it. Make it
decisive. Make the discharge of the great
trust you now hold an example of hope for
righteousness everywhere, a new guaranty
that the Government of America shall
endure.
(gfce
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . 5 . A
F Coolidge, Calvin
70 Have faith in Massachusetts
C77 2d ed. enl.
1919
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