The new nationalism

Introduction

Between the twenty-third of August and the eleventh of September, this year, Mr. Roosevelt made a journey of nearly five thousand five hundred miles. In the course of that journey he gave addresses in fourteen States. The audiences which gathered at the meetings which had been arranged in advance numbered certainly a third of a million. How many hundreds of thousands more formed the throngs which greeted him in the streets, at the railway stations, and in numerous informal but none the less formidable assemblages I do not venture to guess. I made no record of even the number of meetings; and I could not make a reckoning of them without more labor than the inaccurate result would warrant. The fact is that all of us who made this journey were so interested in the substance of what was happening that no one kept any statistical account of its form. The extent of the audiences Mr. Roosevelt really addressed was, however, not even remotely suggested

vii viii INTRODUCTION

by the swaying, crowding thousands in the midst of whom for nearly three weeks we almost continually lived. The number of those whom Mr. Roosevelt's words reached was Hmited only by the circulation of the daily press. All the important press associations and several of the daily newspapers sent special correspondents in a car to be attached to every train on which Mr. Roosevelt traveled from the beginning of the journey to the end; others sent correspondents for part of the way; and in every city or locality in which he appeared the local newspapers arranged for a special report of his speeches and the occurrences that accompanied them.

How did this journey of Mr. Roosevelt's come about I What was the significance of his addresses? What effect did this trip have ?

If an unprejudiced, thoughtful American who had left his country in 1895, and spent fifteen years in a remote region away from all news of the world, had returned in the summer of 19 10, he would, within a few days of his arrival, have been impressed with the change that had taken place in public opinion, and even in the public point of view. When he left, public opinion was hard, rather sordid, decidedly materialistic, very com-

INTRODUCTION ix

placent. Political discussion centered about factories, dividends, and dinner pails. Political appeals were made chiefly to private selfish interests. Political action was judged largely as it was supposed to affect wages or profits. It is true, there was interest in civil service reform, but it was confined to a rather limited circle ; it is true, there were bodies of men who expressed strong convictions regarding the public rights in relation to railways and big corporations, but they were regarded with scorn as Populists. Even on the score of material prosperity, the public vision was narrowed to the prosperity of manufacturing interests. The welfare of the farmer was almost overlooked. The nearly sole exception was exhibited in the distribution of public land to settlers, and this was conducted with too great indifference as to whether such land might fall into the hands of men who were not settlers. There was, it is true, an organization called the Farmers' Alliance, but the country as a whole did not regard it very seriously. As for the riches of the public domain, no public opinion regarding them was really formed, because no political organization made them its concern. It is true, a few public men had been devoting their time and thought to the protection

X INTRODUCTION

of this public property in the interest of the whole people, as was shown in President Harrison's proclamation creating the first National Forest, but the service they performed was little appreciated or even known. There was a rudimentary interest in the navy, and occasional spasmodic excitement over some international question, but no widespread sense of responsibility for the wise and courageous conduct of foreign affairs or for the performance of duties by the United States as a world power.

Suppose this American had returned to his country this year. He would find a change in the attitude of the public on all these matters. Although he would find people discussing high prices and the cost of living, he would miss the once familiar arguments about the "full dinner pail," and the former public interest in appeals for the preservation of dividends. Instead he would find the people aroused not only over every charge that public office had been used for personal reward, but even over questions, such as direct nominations, which involve the principle of making public officers responsible to the popular will; he would find not only the matter of railway rates a subject of common interest, but the whole

INTRODUCTION, xi

problem of the control of public utilities a subject of lively interest; he would find the welfare of the manufacturers no longer the accepted measure of the prosperity of the country, but alongside of that he would find as an object of public concern the welfare of the farmer. Indeed, he would note with surprise that the study of the problems of rural life is regarded as a legitimate duty of a public official. He would be astonished to learn that the whole country is in debate over the proper methods of protecting and conserving the wealth of the public domain, and is ready to hear what might be said as to the regulation of even privately owned wealth in the interest of the pubHc. He would hear with surprise that even the tariff question, which was once merely a question of compromise between rival interests, has become a question of subordinating all private interests to the interest of the pubHc. And with all this change in public opinion regarding domestic problems, he would find an equally fundamental change in public opinion regarding foreign problems — a new pride in military efficiency, a new sense of international obligations, a new conception of responsibility on the part of the Nation toward other peoples and other races.

xii INTRODUCTION

It is time that this new view of national interests and national duties had a name, and the name which has been given it describes it exactly — it is the New NationaKsm.

It was not by chance that this name, which in a few days became current throughout the country, should have been chosen by Mr. Roosevelt to describe his political beliefs, because it is he more than any other one man that has given this national consciousness concrete expression. Utterance had been given to this national consciousness by other leaders of public opinion ; and as a name for the body of political views which this national consciousness had been developing The Outlook had already used the phrase, "The New Federalism." Every great popular movement, however, is a compound of public feeling and personal leadership; and in this popular movement it was Theodore Roosevelt who preeminently supplied the element of personal leadership. During the seven years of his presidency, he was the figure whom the people recognized as the embodiment of their new conceptions, and he was equally recognized as such by those who, for various reasons, sought to check and thwart this movement. He himself has explained his relation to the new public senti-

INTRODUCTION xiil

ment. In his speech at Cheyenne, Wyoming (which is not included in this volume), he pointed out that the one predominant characteristic of the frontiersman was his freedom from provincialism, — his feeling that every part of the United States is of concern to him, his desire to uphold the interests of all other Americans, his sense of partnership with all his fellows in the work of progress, his feehng of comradeship, which, when applied nationally, becomes a determination to work for the common good. And in a later speech — that at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which is to be found printed in this volume — he explained that when, as President, he acted in accord with this popular feeling, it was not because he used any means to divine the popular feehng, but because, as a result of his experience as a ranchman on the frontier, he had come to think that way himself.

His presidency having come to an end, Mr. Roosevelt spent over a year abroad — in Africa and Europe. During his absence the popular movement which he had fostered continued to develop. At the same time the opposition to that movement also grew in intensity. He had, however, become so much identified with the movement that he xiv INTRODUCTION

could no more have withdrawn from it than Lincoln could have withdrawn from the cause of the Union. His duty to continue to exercise his gifts and his prestige on behalf of the nation was obvious. This duty he himself recognized. On the day of his return, indeed within a few minutes after he had once more set foot on American soil, he addressed to a small portion of the great throng gathered to greet him the following words : —

I thank you, Mayor Gaynor. Through you, I thank your committee, and through them I wish to thank the American people for their greeting. I need hardly say I am most deeply moved by the reception given me. No man could receive such a greeting without being made to feel both very proud and very humble.

I have been away a year and a quarter from America, and I have seen strange and interesting things alike in the heart of the frowning wilderness and in the capitals of the mightiest and most highly polished of civilized nations.

I have thoroughly enjoyed myself; and now I am more glad than I can say to get home, to be back in my own country, back among people I love. And I am ready and eager to do my part, so far as I am able, in helping solve problems which must be solved if we, of this the greatest democratic republic upon which the sun has ever shone, are to see its destinies rise to the high level of our hopes and its opportunities.

This is the duty of every citizen, but it is peculiarly my duty; for any man who has ever been honored by being made President of the United States is thereby forever after rendered the debtor of the American people, and is

INTRODUCTION xv

bound throughout his life to remember this as his prime obligation, and, in private life as much as in public life, so to carry himself that the American people may never have cause to feel regret that once they placed him at their head.

Observance of the duty he thus acknowledged made it absolutely impossible for him to shut himself off from public occasions. Invitations to make addresses had reached him as soon as he left the wilderness of Africa, and before he had been in America two months some two thousand such invitations had been sent to him. Some principle of selection had to be adopted in determining which he should accept. One of the first invitations to reach him was for the Frontier Celebration at Cheyenne. Mr. Roosevelt's admiration for the spirit and record of the pioneers led him to accept this; and around it others were naturally grouped, in such an order that a practicable journey could be arranged. His itinerary thus brought him before a grange meeting at Summit Park near Utica, New York; an assemblage of two or three hundred prominent men at breakfast in Buffalo; a gathering in a public square in Council Bluffs, Iowa; a great crowd at the celebration in Cheyenne; a huge gathering in Denver, and, in the State xvi INTRODUCTION

Capitol in the same city, the Legislature of Colorado and their guests; an assemblage \. at the laying of a cornerstone in Pueblo; a great crowd at the dedication of the John Brown battlefield at Osawatomie, Kansas; a great audience at Kansas City, Missouri; another such audience at Omaha; a throng in a baseball park at Sioux City, Iowa; another such throng in and about a large tent '^ in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; two great . audiences in Fargo, North Dakota — one of which assembled at the laying of the cornerstone of a library building at Fargo College, the other of which overran a park at the Labor Day celebration; the delegates to the Conservation Congress and others who V crowded the big auditorium at St. Paul, and then the vast assemblage of ninety or a hun- , dred thousand at the State Fair in the same city; two big audiences at Milwaukee; an outdoor gathering at a picnic at Freeport, Illinois, in behalf of a home for disabled railway men; the members of the Hamilton Club at a banquet in Chicago; an audience in the big music hall at Cincinnati, in connection with an exposition ; a mass of people in a public park in Columbus, Ohio; and, finally, an outdoor crowd at night in Pittsburg, followed by a meeting of people

INTRODUCTION xvii

engaged in civic and philanthropic effort, both meetings arranged under the exceedingly competent management of the Pittsburg Civic Commission. In addition to these audiences, he addressed, in compliance with the numerous telegrams and letters that came to him en route, crowds that gathered at nearly every station where the train stopped between an early hour in the morning and a late hour at night. By these speeches, ranging from those which occupied but a minute or two to those which occupied an hour and a half, he reasserted his belief in the poHcies which had become famihar to the American people as "the Roosevelt poHcies," and the fundamental moral principles on which he beHeved they rested.

In this volume only a portion of even the more important speeches which Mr. Roosevelt made in the course of this journey are included. But, it is believed, those that do appear fairly represent the political belief to which he gave utterance. They are not arranged chronologically. In the first part is a group of speeches which in the main are devoted to the poHcies of the New Nationalism ; in the second part is a group devoted to the fundamental moral principles on which these policies are based; in the third are xviii INTRODUCTION

two speeches which supply interesting examples of the dramatic application of those principles to particular exigencies; in the fourth are a speech and a signed editorial from The Outlook, both of which were prepared by Mr. Roosevelt after the end of the journey, but both of which expound with more detail certain statements which appear in condensed form in a speech in the West.

What the effect of these speeches will be on the history of the country any one may surmise, no one can know; but some of the immediate effects upon public opinion, and in particular upon the audiences who heard them, were, to one who made this journey, very obvious.

All of the speeches here printed were received with remarkable demonstrations of approval. They fulfilled the first requisite of public address: they conveyed ideas from the speaker to his hearers with no evidence of substantial loss in the process of transmission. In some cases the throng was so vast that only a part could form literally the audience; but those who heard made it perfectly plain that they understood. In that respect many a Western crowd proved itself apparently more intelligent than some metropolitan editors. The great mass of the

INTRODUCTION xix

American people, it is evident from these speeches, do not mistake Mr. Roosevelt's meaning.

Those speeches which discuss the policies of the New Nationalism had a double effect of unification. They unified present political issues, and they unified present political forces. In one state, for example, the paramount issue had been direct nominations; in another the tariff; in another political corruption; in another the control of public service corporations. Each of these states saw its own issue, but little of the others. Mr. Roosevelt's speeches made the thoughtful people, and especially the pubHc-spirited leaders, see that these were all a part of the same general issue. As a consequence these speeches united the forces, for they enabled the leaders who were fighting on behalf of the pubHc in one state to see that they were really comrades of those who were fighting on behalf of the public in

another.

Those speeches which discuss fundamental ethical principles (those which I have placed in the second group) had that moral effect which always is evident when a mass of people feel that they have a leader whom they know they can follow. It is the effect

XX INTRODUCTION

that some generals, some football captains, some orchestral conductors have upon their men.

Those speeches which dealt with special exigencies (and I include in this the speech to the Colorado Legislature as well as the two speeches in Part Three), had the effect of suddenly clearing the air. The political struggle in Colorado has been of the most serious character. Corruption and slander have been common; and when Mr. Roosevelt, invited to the very arena of the struggle, struck at both, he wrung applause out of both factions. In Illinois there was, at the time of his visit to Chicago, a legislative scandal of great extent, reaching up to high public officials. When Mr. Roosevelt spoke there, he not only refused to sit at dinner with the Senator whose election created the scandal, but made plain the ugliness of the evil about which men had been timidly silent. In Columbus Mr. Roosevelt spoke at the critical time of a great strike, in which a dispute between a street railway company and its men had resulted in the intimidation of the public. Again Mr. Roosevelt made his words weapons with which to fight the evils that had cowed public opinion. In each of these three cases, the speech was an act which seems simple,

INTRODUCTION xxi

but which no one else had had both the courage and strength to perform.

There are some Americans who are skeptical concerning democracy, some who regard vested wrongs as entitled to the same security that should be assured to vested rights, and some who covet unearned privilege. Such as these can, out of their own brains, construct explanations of this Western Journey that will suit themselves. For such this introduction is entirely superfluous. There are other Americans, however, who, though not distrustful of democracy, though not confused in their thinking about vested rights, and though not selfishly prejudiced, have so often seen the office-holder use his office as personal property that they cannot think any public man capable of an impulse really to serve. Such as these, I hope, can see in Mr. Roosevelt's journey an eminent example of the sort of disinterested public service which is rendered, often more obscurely but as conscientiously, by many other pubHc men. And in proportion as the great popular movement on behalf of the public interest advances, such disinterested public service will become more and more common.

E. H. A.

PART I SPEECH AT OSAWATOMIE 31 August, 1910

We come here to-day to commemorate one of the epoch-making events of the long struggle for the rights of man — the long struggle for the uplift of humanity. Our country — this great repubhc — means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under v^hich each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him. That is why the history of America is now the central feature of the history of the world; for the world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy; and, O my fellow citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your own country, but the burden of doing well and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind.

There have been two great crises in our country's history: first, when it was formed, and then, again, when it was perpetuated; and, in the second of these great crises — in the time of stress and strain which culminated in the Civil War, on the outcome of which depended the justification of what had been done earlier, you men of the Grand Army, you men who fought through the Civil War, not only did you justify your generation, not only did you render life worth living for our generation, but you justified the wisdom of Washington and Washington's colleagues. If this republic had been founded by them only to be split asunder into fragments when the strain came, then the judgment of the world would have been that Washington's work was not worth doing. It was you who crowned Washington's work, as you carried to achievement the high purpose of Abraham Lincoln.

Now, with this second period of our history the name of John Brown will be forever associated; and Kansas was the theater upon which the first act of the second of our great national life dramas was played. It was the result of the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union and freedom; that the great experiment of democratic government on a national

THE NEW NATIONALISM s

scale should succeed and not fall. In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts. This is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it should be truest of all in political Hfe. A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life. I care for the great deeds of the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward in the present. I speak of the men of the past partly that they may be honored by our praise of them, but more that they may serve as examples for the future.

It was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevitable with all such struggles, it had also a dark and terrible side. Very much was done of good, and much also of evil; and, as was inevitable in such a period of revolution, often the same man did both good and evil. For our great good fortune as a nation, we, the people of the United States as a whole, can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least, to remember it without bitterness, and to fix our eyes with pride only on the good that was accomplished. Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed. Looking back, we are all of us now able to do justice to the valor and the disinterestedness and the love of the right, as to each it was given to see the right, shown both by the men of the North and the men of the South in that contest which was finally decided by the attitude of the West. We can admire the heroic valor, the sincerity, the self-devotion shown ahke by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray; and our sadness that such men should have had to fight one another is tempered by the glad knowledge that ever hereafter their descendants shall be found fighting side by side, struggling in peace as well as in war for the uplift of their common country, all alike resolute to raise to the highest pitch of honor and usefulness the nation to which they all belong. As for the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, they deserve honor and recognition such as is paid to no other citizens of the republic; for to them the republic owes its all; for to them it owes its very existence. It is because of what you and your comrades did in the dark years that we of to-day walk, each of us, head erect, and proud that we belong, not to one of a dozen little squabbling contemptible commonwealths, but to the mightiest nation upon which the sun shines.

I do not speak of this struggle of the past merely from the historic standpoint. Our interest is primarily in the application to-day of the lessons taught by the contest of half a century ago. It is of little use for us to pay Hp loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises. It is half melancholy and half amusing to see the way in which well-meaning people gather to do honor to the men who, in company with John Brown, and under the lead of Abraham Lincoln, faced and solved the great problems of the nineteenth century, while, at the same time, these same good people nervously shrink from, or frantically denounce, those who are trying to meet the problems of the twentieth century in the spirit which was accountable for the successful solution of the problems of Lincoln's time.

Of that generation of men to whom we owe so much, the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our debt to him is because he forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. He said : —

I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.

And agam : —

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

If that remark was original with me, I should be even more strongly denounced as a communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln's. I am only quoting it; and that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear. Now, let the workingman hear his side.

Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable ; is a positive good in the world.

And then comes a thoroughly Lincolnlike sentence : —

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of to-day. But this wise kindliness and charity never weakened his arm or numbed his heart. We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us to-day. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.

In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now. At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess

\^ more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of free men to gain and hold the right of self-government as

V against the special interests, who twist the V methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. That is nothing new. All I ask in civil life is what you fought for in the Civil War. I ask that civil life be carried on according to the spirit in which the army was carried on. You never get perfect jus-

THE NEW NATIONALISM ii

tice, but the effort in handling the army was to bring to the front the men who could do the job. Nobody grudged promotion to Grant, or Sherman, or Thomas, or Sheridan, because they earned it. The only complaint was when a man got promotion which he did not earn.