solutely imperative. It- is a matter for the strongest
congratulation, not only for the West, but for the
whole Nation, that the policy went into effect. It is
a matter of special congratulation to Nevada that the
Secretary of the Interior, guided in his choice wholly
by actual conditions on the ground, has been led to
undertake one of the five sets of works which have
been first undertaken, here in Nevada, particularly
near Reno on the Truckee River, as one of the na-
tional projects for the starting and working of the
methods of the law. Extensive surveys have already
been made, and the projects for water storage and
water distribution are at a point which warrants our
belief that immediate action is in sight. There are
vast tracts of excellent land still in the ownership of
the general government here in Nevada and else-
where to which the reclamation act will bring the
flood waters that now annually go to waste. For
Nevada most of these waters originate in the high
mountains lying in sight of Reno, largely just across
the State line in California. Some of these moun-
tains have been included in the forest reserves, and
your interests and the interests of the irrigators in
California imperatively demand the extension of the
forest reserve system so that the source of supply for
the great reservoirs and irrigation works may be
safe from fire, from over-grazing, and from destruc-
tive lumbering. I ask you to pay attention to what



And State Papers 417

I say when I use the word destructive lumbering;
no one can desire to prevent, or do anything but
help, practical and conservative lumbering. In other
words, my fellow-citizens, we have reached a con-
dition in which it must be the object of the Nation
and the State to favor the development of the home-
maker, of the man who takes up the land intend-
ing to keep it for himself and for his children,
so that it shall be even of better use to them
than to him.

The opportunities for the development of Nevada
are very great. Until recently Nevada was only
thought of as a mineral and stock-raising State.
Much can be done yet as regards both the mineral
exploitation and the raising of stock within the
State; but now under the stimulus of irrigation it
is probable that irrigated agriculture will come to
the front, and when it does the population will in-
crease with a rapidity and permanence never before
known. The State of Nevada has led the way not
only in the strength of its plea for national aid in
irrigation, but also in its willingness to assist in the
work. I wish to lay emphasis on the fact that in
Nevada the authorities have been anxious in every
way to help in working out the problem of irri-
gation; and to pay all acknowledgment to them
now. The recent Legislature passed laws which in
many respects should serve as models for the legis-
lation of other States. The union of land and water
under the national law has been recognized, and so
has the fundamental proposition which necessarily



4i8 Presidential Addresses

underlies the prosperity of all communities in which
irrigated agriculture is the chief industry, namely,
that the water belongs to the people and can not
be made a monopoly. The public appreciation of
this fundamental truth that the water belongs to
the people to be taken and put to beneficial use will
wipe out many controversies which are at present so
harmful to the development of the West. And the
example of Nevada will be of material aid in bring-
ing about this fortunate result.

As I said of the forests so it is even more true of
the water supply. It should be our constant policy
by national and by State legislation to see that the
water is used for the benefit of the occupants of the
soil, of those who till and use the soil, that it is not
exploited by any one man or set of men in his or
their interests as against the interests of those on
the land who are to use it. It is a fundamental truth
that the prosperity of any people is simply another
term for the prosperity of the home-makers among
that people. Our entire policy in irrigation, in for-
estry, in handling the public lands, should be in rec-
ognition of that truth, to favor in every w^ay the
man who wishes to take up a given area of soil and
thereon to build a home in w^hich he -will rear his
children as useful citizens of the State.



And State Papers 419

FROM ADDRESS AT THE LAYING OF THE
CORNERSTONE OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK
MEMORIAL, PORTLAND, ORE,, MAY 21, 1903

. Mr. Mayor, and you, my Felloiij-Citizens:

We come here to-day to lay a cornerstone of a
monument that is to call to mind the greatest sin-
gle pioneering feat on this continent, the voyage
across the continent by Lewis and Clark, which
rounded out the ripe statesmanship of Jefferson and
his fellows by giving to the United States all of the
domain between the Mississippi and the Pacific. Fol-
lowing their advent came the reign of the fur trade ;
and then some sixty years ago those entered in
whose children and children's children were to pos-
sess the land. Across the continent in the early 40's
came the ox-drawn white-topped wagons bearing the
pioneers, the stalwart, sturdy, sunburned men, with
their wives and their little ones, who entered into
this country to possess it. You have built up here
this wonderful commonwealth, a commonwealth
great in its past, and infinitely greater in its future.
It was a pleasure to me to-day to have as part of
my escort the men of the Second Oregon, who car-
ried on the expansion of our people beyond the
Pacific as your fathers had carried it on to the Pa-
cific, Speaking to you here I do not have to ask
you to face the future high of heart and confident of
soul. You could not assume any other attitude and
be true to your blood, true to the position in which
you find yourselves on this continent. I speak to



420 Presidential Addresses

the men of the Pacific Slope, to the men whose pred-
ecessors gave lis this region because they were not
afraid, because they did not seek the life of ease and
safety, because their life training was not to shrink
from obstacles but to meet and overcome them ; and
now I ask that this Nation go forward as it has gone
forward in the past; I ask that it shape its life in
accordance with the highest ideals ; I ask that our
name be a synonym for truthful and fair dealing
with all the nations of the world; and I ask two
things in connection with our foreign policy — that
we never wrong the weak and that we never flinch
from the strong. Base is the man who inflicts a
wrong, and base is the man who suffers a wrong to
be done him.

We have met to commemorate a mighty pioneer
feat, a feat of the old days, when men needed to call
upon every ounce of courage and hardihood and
manliness they possessed in order to make good our
claim to this continent. Let us in our turn with
equal courage, equal hardihood and manliness, carry
on the task that our forefathers have intrusted to
our hands ; and let us resolve that we shall leave to
our children and our children's children an even
mightier heritage than we received in our turn.

REMARKS IN ACCEPTING SOUVENIR PRE-
SENTED BY THE WORKMEN OF THE NAVY
YARD, BREMERTON, WASH., MAY 23, 1903

I want to thank you and through you your fel-
low workmen for this token. I also wish to repeat



And State Papers 421

what I have said before, that the victories of Manila
and Santiago reflect credit not merely upon those
who fought, but upon every man who did his work
in preparing the ships for battle. There is not a
workman in any of our yards who did his duty in
connection with the guns, the armor plate, the tur-
rets, the hulls, or anything, who has not his full
right to a share in the credit of those victories. You
all did your part in winning them just as much as
the men who actually fought. Nothing could have
pleased me more than to have received this gift from
the men of the yard, and I appreciate it.

TO THE ARCTIC BROTHERHOOD, SEATTLE,
WASH., MAY 23. 1903

Mr. Chairman, and you, Men and Women of Alaska:
Let me thank you and the members of the Arctic
Brotherhood for their greeting. I am happy to say
that during the last year or two the National Legis-
lature has begun to realize its responsibilities in ref-
erence to Alaska ; and that even those of our people
who do not live on the Pacific Slope are beginning
to understand that in the not distant future Alaska
will be not merely a regularly organized Territory,
but a great and populous State.

Very few European races have exercised a more
profound influence upon Europe, and none has had
a more heroic history, than the race occupying the
Scandinavian peninsula of the Old World. And
Alaska lies in the same latitude as, and can and
will in the lifetime of those I am addressing sup-



422 Presidential Addresses

port as great a population as, the Scandinavian
peninsula. It is curious how our fate as a Nation has
often driven us forward toward greatness in spite
of the protests of many of those esteeming them-
selves in point of training and culture best fitted
to shape the Nation's destiny. In 1803, when we
acquired the territory stretching from the Mississippi
to the Pacific, there were plenty of wise men who
announced that we were acquiring a mere desert,
that it was a violation of the Constitution to ac-
quire it, and that the acquisition was fraught with the
seeds of the dissolution of the Republic. And think
how absolutely the event has falsified the predic-
tions of those men. So when in the late 6o's we
by treaty acquired Alaska, this great territory with
its infinite possibilities was taken by this Repub-
lic in spite of the bitter opposition of many men
who were patriots according to their lights and
who esteemed themselves far-sighted. And but five
years ago there were excellent men who bemoaned
the fact that we were obliged during the war with
Spain to take possession of the Philippines and to
show that we were hereafter to be one of the domi-
nant powers of the Pacific. In every instance how
the after events of history have falsified the predic-
tions of the men of little faith! There are critics
so feeble and so timid that they shrink back when
this Nation asserts that it comes in the category of
the nations who dare to be great, and they want to
know, forsooth, the cost of greatness and what it
means. We do not know the cost, but we know it



And State Papers 423

will be more than repaid ten times over by the
result ; and what it may ultimately mean we do not
know, but we know what the present holds, what the
present need demands, and we take the present and
hold ourselves ready to abide the result of what-
ever the future may bring.

When I speak to you of the Pacific Slope, to you
of the new Northwest, whose cities are seated here
by the Sound, I speak to people abounding in their
youth and their virile manhood, who do not fear to
grasp opportunity as the opportunity comes, and
who weigh slight risk but lightly in the balance
when on the other side of the scale comes the great-
ness of triumph, the greatness of acquisition. We
took Alaska thirty-five years ago, and at last we
have begun to wake up to the heritage that thereby
we have handed over to our children. I speak to
you, citizens of Alaska, people who have dwelt there-
in, to say how much all our people owe to you. Dur-
ing the last year many wise laws have been put upon
the statute book in reference to Alaska ; not as many
as should have been put, but a good many. I ear-
nestly hope that Congress will speedily provide for a
delegate from Alaska, so that the people of the Ter-
ritory may have some recognized exponent whose
duty it shall be to place its needs before the National
Legislature. Meanwhile, with the assistance of the
Senators and Representatives in Congress from this
section of the country, I shall do all that in me lies
to see that the proper kinds of legislation are en-
acted for the Territorv.



424 Presidential Addresses

The immediate cause of the great development of
Alaska of course is to be found in its mines ; but
most of the people of this country are wholly in
error when they think of the mines as being the
sole or even the chief permanent cause of Alaska's
future greatness. Alaska has great possibilities of
agricultural and pastoral development. Not only her
mines, her fisheries, her forests, but her agriculture
and her stock-raising will combine to make Alaska
one of the great wealth-producing portions of our
Republic. I am anxious that our laws should be
framed in the interest of those who intend to go
there and stay there and bring up their children
there and make it in very fact as well as in name an
integral part of this Republic. I ask your help and
pledge you my help in the effort to secure such leg-
islation. In the case of the mine you get the metal
out of the earth, you can not leave any metal in
there to produce other metal; but in the case of the
salmon fishery, if you are wise you will insist upon
its being carried on under conditions which will
make the salmon fishery as valuable in that river
thirty years hence as now. Do not take all the sal-
mon out and go away and leave the empty river for
your children and children's children; take it out
under conditions— the conditions are ready to be
created for you by the National Fish Commission,
which has been so singularly successful in its work
—which will secure the preservation of that river as
a salmon river, which will secure the perpetuation
of salmon canneries along its banks, so that it will



And State Papers 425

be not an industry carried on only by Orientals in
the employ oi three or four alien capitalists, but
carried on in such a way as to be a perpetual source
of income to the actual settlers resident in the lo-
cality. Just in the same way I want to have you see
that the lumber industry is exploited in a way which,
while giving a great return to those engaged in it
at the moment, shall also secure the preserva-
tion of the forests for the settlers and the settlers'
children that are to come in and inherit the land.
I wish to see such land laws enacted and to see them
so administered as to be in the interest of the actual
settler who goes to Alaska to live, who desires there
to produce crops, to raise stock, to make a home for
himself; subject to that condition I desire to see leg-
islation shaped in the spirit of the broadest liber-
ality that will secure the quickest possible develop-
ment of the resources of Alaska ; and with that aim
in view to have all the encouragement possible given .
to those seeking to establish by steamship line and
by railway quick and efficient transportation facili-
ties in the Territory.

Few things have been more typical of our people
and have been more full of promise for the future
than the way in which the resources have been de-
veloped ; and when one sees what has been done here
during the last few years I think we have cause to
feel abundantly justified in our belief that the quali-
ties of the old-time pioneers who first penetrated
the woody wilderness between the Alleghanies and
the Mississippi, who then steered their way across

2~V0L. XIV



426 Presidential Addresses

vast seas of grass from the Mississippi to the
Rockies, who penetrated the passes of the great bar-
ren mountains until they came to this, the greatest
of all the oceans, still survive in their grandsons and
successors. Nor must we forget in speaking of
Alaska the immense importance that the Territory
has from the standpoint of the needs of the Nation
as a whole, as a dominant power in the Pacific. Ex-
actly as with the building of the Isthmian Canal we
shall make our Atlantic and our Pacific coasts in ef-
fect continuous, so the possession and peopling of
the Alaskan seacoast puts us in a position of domi-
nance as regards the Pacific which no other nations
share or can share.

FROM ADDRESS AT EVERETT, WASH.,
MAY 23. 1903

There are few problems which so especially con-
cern Washington, Oregon, and California as the
problem of forestry. Nothing has been of better
augury for the welfare and prosperity of these great
States as well as for the other forest States than the
way in which those actively engaged in the lumber-
ing business have come of recent years to work hand
in hand with those who have made forestry a study
in the effort to preserve the forests. The whole
question is a business, an economic question; an
economic question for the Nation, a business ques-
tion for the individual. East of your great mountain
chains the question of water supply becomes vital
and becomes inseparable from that of forestry.



And State Papers 427

Here that question does not enter in. The kimber-
ing interest is the fourth great business interest in
point of importance in the United States. There is
engaged in it a capital of over six hundred milHons
of doJlars, and every year the wage-workers in that
industry receive one hundred milhons of dollars.
Such an industry so vitally connected with many
others in the country can not with wisdom be neg-
lected, the interests depending upon it are too vast.
I do not have to say here in Washington that fire is
a great enemy of the forests. Here in Washington
it is probable that fire has destroyed more than the
axe during the decade in which the axe has been at
work.

Our aim should be to get the fullest use from
the forest to-day, and yet to get that benefit in ways
which will keep the forests for our children in the
generations to come ; so that, for instance, the coun-
try adjoining Puget Sound shall have the lumber-
ing industry as a permanent industry. Recently
the trade journals of that industry have been dwell-
ing upon the fact that its very existence is actually
at stake, and nowhere in the whole country can the
question of forestry be handled better than in this
region, because nowhere else is it so easy to produce
a second crop. You are fortunate in having such
climatic conditions, such conditions of soil, that here
more than anywhere else the forest renews itself
quickly, so as in a comparatively short number of
years to be again a great mercantile and industrial
asset. The preservation of our forests depends



428 Presidential Addresses

chiefly upon the wisdom with which the practical
lumberman, the practical expert in dealing with the
lumber industry, works with the men who have
studied forestry under all conditions. I am glad in-
deed that such co-operation is more and more being
accepted as a matter of course by both sides.

FROM ADDRESS AT SEATTLE, WASH.,
MAY 23, 1903

There is no other body of water in the world
which confers upon the commonwealth possess-
ing it quite the natural advantages that Puget
Sound confers upon your State. There is no other
State in the Union, and I include all of them, which
has greater natural advantages and a more assured
future of greatness than this State of Washington.
Phenomenal though your growth has been, it has
barely begun ; and your growth in the half century
now opening will dwarf absolutely even your growth
in the immediate past.

I am speaking in the gateway to Alaska. All our
people, even those from the locality whence I come,
are beginning to appreciate a little of Alaska's fu-
ture. The men of my own age whom I am address-
ing will not be old men before we see Alaska one of
the rich and strong States of the Union. I thank
fortune that the National Legislature has begun to
wake up io the fact that Alaska has interests of vital
importance not merely to her but to the entire
Union. Alaska contains a territor}^ which will with-
in this century support as large a population as the



And State Papers 429

combined Scandinavian countries of Europe; those
countries from which has sprung as wonderful a
race as ever imprinted its characteristics upon the
history of civiHzation. Exactly as the Scandinavian
peoples have left their mark upon the entire history
of Europe, so we shall see Alaska with its mines, its
lumber, its fisheries, with its possibilities in agri-
culture and stock-raising, with its possibilities of
commercial command, with the tremendous develop-
ment that is going on within it even now, produce as
hardy and vigorous a people as any portion oi
North America.

AT SPOKANE, WASH., MAY 26, 1903

Senator Turner, and you, my Fellow- Americans:

I am in a city at the eastern gateway of this State
with the great railroad systems of the State running
through it. On the western edge of this State in
Puget Sound I have seen the homing places of the
great steamship lines, which, in connection with
these great railroads, are doing so much to develop
the Oriental trade of this country and this State.
Washington will owe no small part of its future
greatness, and that greatness will be great indeed,
to the fact that it is thus doing its share in acquiring
for the United States the dominance of the Pacific!
Those railroads, the men and the corporations that
have built them, have rendered a very great service
to the community. The men who are building, the
corporations which are building the great steamship



430 Presidential Addresses

lines have likewise rendered a very great service to
the community. Every man who has made wealth
or used it in developing great legitimate business
enterprises has been of benefit and not harm to the
country at large. This city has grown by leaps and
bounds only when the railroads came to it, when the
railroads came to the State ; and if the State were
now cut off from its connection by rail and by steam-
ship with the rest of the world its position would
of course diminish incalculably. Great good has
come from the development of our railroad system ;
great good has been done by the individuals and cor-
porations that have made that development possible ;
and in return good is done to them, and not harm,
when they are required to obey the law. Ours is
a government of liberty by, through and under the
law. No man is above it and no man is below it.
The crime of cunning, the crime of greed, the crime
of violence, are all equally crimes, and against them
all alike the law must set its face. This is not and
never shall be a government either of a plutocracy
or of a mob. It is, it has been, and it will be, a gov-
ernment of the people ; including alike the people of
great wealth and of moderate wealth, the people who
employ others, the people who are employed, the
wage-worker, the lawyer, the mechanic, the banker,
the farmer ; including them all, protecting each and
every one if he acts decently and squarely, and dis-
criminating against any one of them, no matter from
what class he comes, if he does not act squarely and
fairly, if he does not obey the law. While all peo-



And State Papers 431

pie are foolish if they violate or rail against the law
— wicked as well as foolish, but all foolish — yet the
most foolish man in this Republic is the man of
wealth who complains because the law is adminis-
tered with impartial justice against or for him. His
folly is greater than the folly of any other man who
so complains; for he lives and moves and has his
being because the law does in fact protect him and
his property.

We have the right to ask every decent American
citizen to rally to the support of the law if it is ever
broken against the interest of the rich man; and
we have the same right to ask that rich man cheer-
fully and gladly to acquiesce in the enforcement
against his seeming interest of the law, if it is the
law. Incidentally, whether he acquiesces or not, the
law will be enforced, and this whoever he may be,
great or small, and at whichever end of the soQial
scale he may be.

I ask that we see to it in our country that the line
of division in the deeper matters of our citizenship
be drawn, never between section and section, never
between creed and creed, never, thrice never, be-
tween class and class ; but that the line be drawn on
the line of conduct, cutting through sections, cut-
ting through creeds, cutting through classes; the
line that divides the honest from the dishonest, the
line that divides good citizenship from^ bad citizen-
ship, the line that declares a man a good citizen only
if, and always if, he acts in accordance with the
immutable law of righteousness, which has been the



432 Presidential Addresses

same from the beginning of history to the present
moment, and which will be the same from now until
the end of recorded time.

FROM ADDRESS AT COLUMBIA GARDENS,