The Pope prayed an hour to-day for the soul of President McKinley. The pontiff wept with uncontrollable emotion on receiving the news of the President’s death. All audiences at the Vatican were suspended.
CHAPTER IX.
PRESIDENT McKINLEY’S LAST SPEECH.
President McKinley’s last speech, delivered on President’s Day at the Pan-American Exposition, September 5, the day before he was shot, was the greatest speech of his life. It was a message to all the world, robust in its Americanism, and fraught with good will for all nations and all mankind. It was as follows:
“President Milburn, Director General Buchanan, Commissioners, Ladies and Gentlemen:—I am glad to be again in the city of Buffalo and exchange greetings with her people, to whose generous hospitality I am not a stranger, and with whose good will I have been repeatedly and signally honored.
“To-day I have additional satisfaction in meeting and giving welcome to the foreign representatives assembled here, whose presence and participation in this exposition have contributed in so marked a degree to its interests and success. To the commissioners of the Dominion of Canada and the British colonies, the French colonies, the republics of Mexico and of Central and South America and the commissioners of Cuba and Porto Rico, who share with us in this undertaking, we give the hand of fellowship and felicitate with them upon the triumphs of art, science, education and manufacture which the old has bequeathed to the new century.
“Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world’s advancement. They stimulate the energy, enterprise and intellect of the people and quicken human genius. They go into the home. They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They open mighty storehouses of information to the student.
BENEFIT IN EXPOSITIONS.
“Every exposition, great or small, has helped to some onward step. Comparison of ideas is always educational, and as such instructs the brain and hand of man. Friendly rivalry follows, which is the spur to industrial improvement, the inspiration to useful invention and to high endeavor in all departments of human activity. It exacts a study of the wants, comforts, and even the whims of the people and recognizes the efficacy of high quality and low prices to win their favor.
“The quest for trade is an incentive to men of business to devise, invent, improve and economize in the cost of production. Business life, whether among ourselves or with other people, is ever a sharp struggle for success. It will be none the less so in the future. Without competition we would be clinging to the clumsy and antiquated processes of farming and manufacture and the methods of business of long ago, and the twentieth would be no further advanced than the eighteenth century. But though commercial competitors we are, commercial enemies we must not be.