BUTTE, MONT., MAY 27, 1903
Mr. Chairman, and you, my Fellow-Citizens:
It would have been a great pleasure to come to
Butte in any event; it is a double pleasure to come
here at the invitation of the representatives of the
wage-workers of Butte. I do not say merely work-
ingmen, because I hold that every good American
who does his duty must be a workingman. There
are many different kinds of work to do; but so long
as the work is honorable, is necessary, and is well
done the man who does it well is entitled to the
respect of his fellows.
I have come here to this meeting especially as
the invited guest of the wage-workers, and I am
happy to be able to say that the kind of speech I
will make to you, I would make just in exactly
the same language to any group of employers or
any set of our citizens in any corner of this Repub-
lic. I do not think so far as I know that I have
ever promised beforehand anything I did not make
a strong effort to make good afterward. It is some-
times very attractive and very pleasant to make
any kind of a promise without thinking whether
or not you can fulfil it ; but in the after event it is
always unpleasant when the time for fulfilling
comes; for in the long run the most disagreeable
And State Papers 433
truth is a safer companion than the most pleasant
falsehood.
To-night I have come hither looking on either
hand at the results of the enterprises which have
made Butte so great. The man who by the use of
his capital develops a great mine, the man who by
the use of his capital builds a great railroad, the
man who by the use of his capital either individually
or joined with others like him does any great legit-
imate business enterprise, confers a benefit, not a
harm, upon the community, and is entitled to be
so regarded. He is entitled to the protection of
the law, and in return he is to be required himself
to obey the law. The law is no respecter of per-
sons. The law is to be administered neither for
the rich man as such, nor for the poor man as such.
â– It is to be administered for every man, rich or poor,
if he is an honest and law-abiding citizen; and it
is to be invoked against any man, rich or poor, who
violates it, without regard to which end of the social
scale he may stand at, without regard to whether his
offence takes the form of greed and cunning, or
the form of physical violence; in either case if he
violates the law, the law is to be invoked against
him ; and in so invoking it I have the right to chal-
lenge the support of all good citizens and to demand
the acquiescence of every good man. I hope I will
have it; but once for all I wish it understood that
even if I do not have it I shall enforce the law.
The soldiers who fought in the great Civil War
fought for liberty under, by, and through the law;
434 Presidential Addresses
and they fought to put a stop once for all to any
effort to sunder this country on the lines of sec-
tional hatred; therefore their memory shall be for-
ever precious to our people. We need to keep ever
iti mind that he is the worst enemy of this country
who would strive to separate its people along the
lines of section against section, of creed against
creed, or of class against class. There are two sides
to that. It is a base and an infamous thing for the
man of means to act in a spirit of arrogant and
brutal disregard of right toward his fellow who has
less means ; and it is no less infamous, no less base,
to act in a spirit of rancor, envy, and hatred against
the man of greater means, merely because of his
greater means. If we are to preserve this Republic
as it was founded, as it was handed down to us
by the men of '6i to '65, and as it is and will be,
we must draw the line never between section and
section, never between creed and creed, thrice never
between class and class; but along the line of con-
duct, the line that separates the good citizen wherever
he may be found from the bad citizen wherever he
may be found. This is not and never shall be a gov-
ernment of a plutocracy ; it is not and never shall be a
government by a mob. It is as it has been and as it
will be, a government in which every honest man,
every decent man, be he employer or employed, wage-
worker, mechanic, banker, lawyer, farmer, be he
who he may, if he acts squarely and fairly, if he
does his duty by his neighbor and the State, re-
ceives the full protection of the law and is given
And State Papers 435
the amplest chance to exercise the abihty that there
is within him, alone or in combination with his
fellows as he desires. My friends, it is sometimes
easier to preach a doctrine under which the mil-
lennium will be promised off-hand if you have a par-
ticular kind of law, or follow a particular kind of
conduct— it is easier, but it is not better. The mil-
lennium is not here; it is some thousand years off
yet. Meanwhile there must be a good deal of work
and struggle, a good deal of injustice; we shall
often see the tower of Siloam fall on the just as
well as the unjust. We are bound in honor to try
to remedy injustice, but if we are wise we will
seek to remedy it in practical ways. Above all, re-
member this: that the most unsafe adviser to fol-
low is the man who would advise us to do wrong
in order that we may benefit by it. That man is
never a safe man to follow ; he is always the most
dangerous of guides. The man who seeks to per-
suade any of us that our advantage comes in wrong-
ing or oppressing others can be depended upon, if
the opportunity comes, to do wrong to us in his
own interest, just as he has endeavored to make us
in our supposed interest do wrong to others.
AT THE TABERNACLE, SALT LAKE CITY
UTAH, MAY 29, 1903
Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, Senator Kearns, and
you, my Fellozv- Americans:
I am particularly glad to have the chance to
speak to you here in this city, in Utah, this morning,
436 Presidential Addresses
because you have exemplified a doctrine which it
seems to me all-essential for our people ever to
keep fresh in their minds — the fact that though nat-
ural resources can do a good deal, though the law
can do a good deal, the fundamental requisite in
building up prosperity and civilization is the requi-
site of individual character in the individual man
or woman. Here in this State the pioneers and
those who came after them took not the land that
would ordinarily be chosen as land that would yield
return with little effort. You took territory which
at the outset was called after the desert, and you
literally — not figuratively — you literally made the
wilderness blossom as the rose. The fundamental
element in building up Utah has been the work of
the citizens of Utah. And you did it because your
people entered in to possess the land and to leave
it after them to their children and their children's
children. You here whom I am addressing and
your predecessors did not come in to exploit the
land and then go somewhere else. You came in,
as the Governor has said, as homemakers, to make
homes for yourselves and those who should come
after you; and that is the only way in which a
State can be built up, in which the Nation can be
built up. You have built up this great community
because you came here with the purpose of making
this your abiding home, and of leaving to your
children not an impoverished, but an enriched herit-
age; and I ask that all our people from one ocean
to the other, but especially the people of the arid
And State Papers 437
and the semi-arid regions, the [people of the great
plains, the people of the mountains, approach the
problem of taking care of the physical resources of
the country in the spirit which has made Utah what
it is. You have developed your metal wealth won-
derfully ; and your growth is not a boom growth-
it is a thoroughly healthy, normal growth. During
the past decade the population has doubled and the
wealth quadrupled ; and labor is employed at as high
a compensation as is paid elsewhere in the world.
Although you are not essentially a mining State,
in the last year you marketed thirty millions' worth
of ore; and again you showed your good sense in
the way you handled it; for you paid five millions
in dividends and you invested the balance in labor
and surplus. The effort to make a big showing in
dividends is not always healthy for the future.
Here you have shown your wonderful capacity to
develop the earth so as to make both irrigated agri-
culture and stock-raising in all its forms two great
industries. When you deal with a mine you take
the ore out of the earth and take it away, and in
the end exhaust the mine. The time may be very
long in coming before it is exhausted, or it may be
a short time; but in any event, mining means the
exhaustion of the mine. But that is exactly what
agriculture does not and must not mean.
So far from agriculture properly exhausting the
land, it is always the sign of a vicious system of
agriculture if the land is rendered poorer by it.
The direct contrary should be the fact. After the
438 Presidential Addresses
farmer has had the farm for his hfe he should be
able to hand it to his children as a better farm than
it was when he had it.
In these regions, in the Rocky Mountain regions,
it is especially incumbent upon us to treat the ques-
tion of the natural pasturage, the question of the
forests, and the question of the use of the waters, all
from the one standpoint — the standpoint of the far-
seeing statesman, of the far-seeing citizen, who
wishes to preserve and not to exhaust the resources
of the country, who wishes to see those resources
come into the hands not of a few men of great
wealth, least of all into the hands of a few men
who will speculate in them ; but be distributed
among many men, each of whom intends to make
his home in the land.
This whole so-called arid and semi-arid region
is by nature the stock range of the Nation. One
of the questions which are rising to confront us is
how this range may be made to produce the great-
est number and best quality of horses, cattle, and
sheep, not only this year, not only next year, but
for this generation and the next generation. The
old system of grazing the ranges so closely as to
injure the whole crop of grass was a serious detri-
ment to the development of the West, a serious detri-
ment to the development of our people. The ranges
must be treated as a great invested capital ; and that
old system tended to dissipate and partially to de-
stroy that capital. That is something that we can
not as a Nation of home makers permit. The wise
And State Papers 439
man, the wise industry, the wise nation, maintains
such capital unimpaired and tries to increase it;
and more and more the range lands will be used
in conjunction with the small irrigable areas which
they include; so that the industry can take on a
more stable character than ever before. It is im-
possible permanently, although it may be advisable
for the time being, to move stock in a body from
summer to winter ranges across country which can
be made into homesteads, because when the country
can itself be taken by actual settlers, in the long
run it will only be possible to move the stock through
hundreds of miles of dusty lanes where they can
not graze, where they can not live. Our aim must
be steadily to help develop the settler, the man who
lives in the land and in growing up with it and
raising his children to own it after him. More
and more hereafter the stock owners will have the
necessity forced upon them of providing green
summer pasturage within the limits of their own
ranges; and so the question of irrigation is well-
nigh as important to the stockmen as to the agri-
culturist proper.
In the same way our mountain forests must be
preserved from the harm done by over-grazing.
Let all the grazing be done in them that can be done
without injury to them, but do not let the moun-
tain forests be despoiled by the man who will over-
graze them and destroy them for the sake of three
years' use, and then go somewhere else, and leave
by so much diminished the heritage of those who
440 Presidential Addresses
remain permanently in the land. I believe that
ah"eady the movement has begun which will make
in the long run the stock-raisers, — of whom I have
been one myself, whose business I know, and with
whom I feel the heartiest sympathy, — through the
enlightenment of their own self-interest, become the
heartiest defenders and the chief beneficiaries of
the wise and moderate use of forest ranges, both
within and without the forest reserves. It is and
it must be the definite policy of this government
to consider the good of all its citizens — stockmen,
lumbermen, irrigators, and all others — in dealing
with the forest reserves ; and for that reason I most
earnestly desire in every way to bring about the
heartiest co-operation between the men who are
doing the actual business of stock-raising, the actual
business of irrigated agriculture, the actual business
of lumbering, — the closest and most intimate rela-
tions, the heartiest co-operation between them and
the government at Washington through the Depart-
ment of Agriculture. Of course I do not have to
say to any audience of intelligent people that noth-
ing is such an enemy to the stock industry as per-
sistent over-grazing. We shall have not far hence
to raise the problem of the best method of making
use of the public range. Our people have not as
yet settled in their own minds what is that best
method. In some way there will have to be formed
such regulation as shall without undue restriction
prevent the needless over-grazing, while keeping
the public lands open to settlement through home-
And State Papers 441
stead entry. Such a policy would, of course, be
of the most far-reaching- benefit to the whole range
industry. It is the same in dealing with our forest
reserves. Almost every industry depends in some
more or less vital way upon the preservation of the
forests; and while citizens die, the government and
the nation do not die, and we are bound in dealing
with the forests to exercise the foresight necessary to
use them now, but to use them in such a way as will
also keep them for those who are to come after us.
The first great object of the forest reserves is,
of course, the first great object of the whole land
policy of the United States, — the creation of homes,
the favoring of the home-maker. That is why we
wish to provide for the home-makers of the present
and the future the steady and continuous supply
of timber, grass, and above all, of water. That is
the object of the forest reserves, and that is why
I bespeak your cordial co-operation in their preser-
vation. Remember you must realize, what I thor-
oughly realize, that however wise a policy may be
it can be enforced only if the people of the States
believe in it. We can enforce the provisions of the
forest reserve law or of any other law only so far
as the best sentiment of the community or the State
will permit that enforcement. Therefore it lies
primarily not with the people at Washington, but
with you, yourselves, to see that such policies are
supported as will redound to the benefit of the home
makers and therefore the sure and steady building
up of the State as a whole.
44^ Presidential Addresses
One word as to the greatest question with which
our people as a whole have to deal in the mat-
ter of internal development to-day — the question
of irrigation. Not of recent years has any more
important law been put upon the statute books of
the Federal Government than the law a year ago
providing for the first time that the National Gov-
ernment should interest itself in aiding and building
up a system of irrigated agriculture in the Rocky
Mountains and plains States. Here the govern-
ment had to a large degree to sit at the feet of
Gamaliel in the person of Utah; for what you had
done and learned was of literally incalculable bene-
fit to those engaged in framing and getting through
the national irrigation law. Irrigation was first
practiced on a large scale in this State. The neces-
sity of the pioneers here led to the development of
irrigation to a degree absolutely unknown before
on this continent. In no respect is the wnsdom of
the early pioneers made more evident than in the
sedulous care they took to provide for small farms,
carefully tilled by those who lived on and benefited
from them ; and hence it comes about that the aver-
age amount of land required to support a family
in Utah is smaller than in any other part of the
United States. We all know that when you once
get irrigation applied rain is a very poor substitute
for it. The Federal Government must co-operate
with Utah and Utah people for a further extension
of the irrigated area. Many of the simpler prob-
lems of obtaining and applying water have already
And State Papers 443
been solved and so well solved that, as I have said,
some of the most important provisions of the Fed-
eral act, such as the control of the irrigating works
by the communities they serve, such as making the
water appurtenant to the land and not a source
of speculation apart from the land, were based upon
the experience of Utah. Of course the control of
the larger streams which flow through more than
one State must come under the Federal Government.
Many of the great tracts which will ultimately so
enlarge the cultivated area of Utah, which will ul-
timately so increase its population and wealth, are
surrounded with intricate complications because of
the high development which irrigation has already
reached in this State. Necessarily the Federal offi-
cers charged with the execution of the law must
proceed with great caution so as not to disturb pres-
ent vested rights; but subject to that, they will go
forward as fast as they can. They realize, and all
men who have actually done irrigating here will
realize, that no man is more timid than the prac-
tical irrigator regarding any change in the water
distribution. He wants to look well before he
leaps. He has learned from bitter experience what
damage can come from well meant changes hastily
made. The government can do a good deal; the
government will do a good deal ; but your experience
here in Utah has shown that the greatest results
which are accomplishing most spring directly from
the sturdy courage, the self-denial, the willingness
with iron resolution to endure the risk and the suf-
444 Presidential Addresses
fering, of the pioneers ; for they were the men who
sought and found a hvehhood in what was once a
desert, and they must be protected in the legitimate
fruits of their toil.
One of the tasks that the government must do
here in Utah is to build reservoirs for the storage
of the flood waters, to undertake works too great
to be undertaken by private capital. Great as the
task is, and great as its benefits will become, the
government must do still more. Besides the storage
of the water there must be protection of the water-
sheds; and that is why I ask you to help the Na-
tional Government protect the watersheds by pro-
tecting the forests upon them.
AT FREEPORT, ILL., JUNE 3, 1903
Congressman Hitt, and you, my F ellow-C ountry-
men :
Here where we meet to-day there occurred one
of those memorable scenes in accordance with which
the whole future history of nations is molded. Here
were spoken winged words that flew through im-
mediate time and that will fly through that por-
tion of eternity recorded in the history of our race.
Here was sounded the keynote of the struggle which
after convulsing the Nation, made it in fact what
it had only been in name, — at once united and free.
It is eminently fitting that this monument, given by
the women of this city in commemoration of the
great debate that here took place, should be dedi-
And State Papers 445
cated by the men whose deeds made good the words
of Abraham Lincohi — the soldiers of the Civil War.
The word was mighty. Had it not been for the
word the deeds could not have taken place ; but
without the deeds the word would have been the
idlest breath. It is forever to the honor of our
nation that we brought forth the statesman who,
with far-sighted vision, could pierce the clouds that
obscured the sight of the keenest of his fellows,
could see what the future inevitably held; and
moreover that we had back of the statesman and
behind him the men to whom it was given to fight
in the greatest war ever waged for the good of
mankind, for the betterment of the world.
I have literally but a moment here. I could not
resist the chance that was offered me to stop and
dedicate this monument, for great though we now
regard Abraham Lincoln, my countrymen, the future
will put him on an even higher pinnacle than we
have put him. In all history I do not believe that
there is to be found an orator whose speeches will
last as enduringly as certain of the speeches of Lin-
coln; and in all history, with the sole exception of
the man who founded this Republic, I do not think
there will be found another statesman at once so
great and so single-hearted in his devotion to the
weal of his people. We can not too highly honor
him; and the highest way in which we can honor
him is to see that our homage is not only homage
of words; that to lip loyalty we join the loyalty
of the heart ; that we pay honor to the memory of
44^ Presidential Addresses
Abraham Lincoln by so conducting ourselves, by
so carrying ourselves as citizens of this Republic,
that we shall hand on undiminished to our children
and our children's children the heritage we received
from the men who upheld the statesmanship of
Lincoln in the council, who made good the soldier-
ship of Grant in the field.
AT THE LINCOLN MONUMENT, SPRINGFIELD,
ILL., JUNE 4, 1903
It is a good thing that the guard around the
tomb of Lincoln should be composed of colored sol-
diers. It was my own good fortune at Santiago
to serve beside colored troops. A man who is good
enough to shed his blood for the country is good
enough to be given a square deal afterward. More
than that no man is entitled to, and less than that
no man shall have.
AT THE CONSECRATION OF GRACE MEMO-
RIAL REFORMED CHURCH, WASHINGTON,
D. C, JUNE 7, 1903
I shall ask your attention to three lines of the
Dedication Canticle: "Serve the Lord with, glad-
ness: enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and
into His courts with praise. Who shall ascend into
the hill of the Lord ? or who shall stand in His holy
place ? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart ;
who hath not lifted up his soul with vanity, nor
sworn deceitfully."
Better lines could surely not be brought into any
And State Papers 447
dedication service of a church; and it is a happy
thing that we should have repeated them this morn-
ing. This church is consecrated to the service of
the Lord ; and we can serve Him by the way w^e
serve our fellow-men. This church is consecrated
to service and duty. It was written of old that "by
their fruits ye shall know them" ; and we can show
the faith that is in us, we can show the sincerity of
our devotion, by the fruits we bring forth. The man
who is not a tender and considerate husband, a
loving and wise father, is not serving the Lord
when he goes to church ; so with the woman ; so
with all who come here. Our being in this church,
our communion here with one another, our sitting
under the pastor and hearing from him the word
of God, must, if we are sincere, show their effects
in our lives outside.
We of the Dutch and German Reformed Churches,
like our brethren of the Lutheran Church, have a
peculiar duty to perform in this great country of
ours, a country still in the making, for we have
the duty peculiarly incumbent upon us to take care
of our brethren who come each year from over seas
. to our shores. The man going to a new country
is torn by the roots from all his old associations,
and there is great danger to him in the time before
he gets his roots down into the new country, before
he brings himself into touch with his fellows in the
new land. For that reason I always take a peculiar
interest in the attitude of our churches toward
the immigrants who come to these shores. I feel
44^ Presidential Addresses
that we should be pecuHarly watchful over them,
because of our own history, because we or our
fathers came here under like conditions. Now
that we have established ourselves let us see to
it that we stretch out the hand of help, the hand of
brotherhood, toward the new-comers, and help them