Yours, faithfully,
John Hay.
“University of California,
“Office of the President.
“By authority vested in me by the regents of the University of California, I confer the degree of Doctor of Laws upon William McKinley, President of the United States, a statesman singularly gifted to unite the discordant forces of the Government and mold the diverse purposes of men toward progressive and salutary action, a magistrate whose poise of judgment has been tested and vindicated in a succession of national emergencies; good citizen, brave soldier, wise executive, helper and leader of men, exemplar to his people of the virtues that build and conserve the state, society, and the home.
“Berkeley, May 15, 1901.”
It would be hard to imagine an epitaph which a good citizen would be more anxious to deserve or one which would more happily describe the qualities of that great and good citizen whose life we here commemorate. He possessed to a very extraordinary degree the gift of uniting discordant forces and securing from them a harmonious action which told for good government. From purposes not merely diverse, but bitterly conflicting, he was able to secure healthful action for the good of the State. In both poise and judgment he rose level to the several emergencies he had to meet as leader of the nation, and like all men with the root of true greatness in them he grew to steadily larger stature under the stress of heavy responsibilities. He was a good citizen and a brave soldier, a Chief Executive whose wisdom entitled him to the trust which he received throughout the nation. He was not only a leader of men but preeminently a helper of men; for one of his most marked traits was the intensely human quality of his wide and deep sympathy. Finally, he not merely preached, he was, that most valuable of all citizens in a democracy like ours, a man who in the highest place served as an unconscious example to his people of the virtues that build and conserve alike our public life, and the foundation of all public life, the intimate life of the home.
Many lessons are taught us by his career, but none more valuable than the lesson of broad human sympathy for and among all of our citizens of all classes and creeds. No other President has ever more deserved to have his life work characterized in Lincoln’s words as being carried on “with malice toward none, with charity toward all.” As a boy he worked hard with his hands; he entered the Army as a private soldier; he knew poverty; he earned his own livelihood; and by his own exertions he finally rose to the position of a man of moderate means. Not merely was he in personal touch with farmer and town dweller, with capitalist and wageworker, but he felt an intimate understanding of each, and therefore an intimate sympathy with each; and his consistent effort was to try to judge all by the same standard and to treat all with the same justice. Arrogance toward the weak, and envious hatred of those well off, were equally abhorrent to his just and gentle soul.
Surely this attitude of his should be the attitude of all our people to-day. It would be a cruel disaster to this country to permit ourselves to adopt an attitude of hatred and envy toward success worthily won, toward wealth honestly acquired. Let us in this respect profit by the example of the republics of this Western Hemisphere to the south of us. Some of these republics have prospered greatly; but there are certain ones that have lagged far behind, that still continue in a condition of material poverty, of social and political unrest and confusion. Without exception the republics of the former class are those in which honest industry has been assured of reward and protection; those where a cordial welcome has been extended to the kind of enterprise which benefits the whole country, while incidentally, as is right and proper, giving substantial rewards to those who manifest it. On the other hand, the poor and backward republics, the republics in which the lot of the average citizen is least desirable, and the lot of the laboring man worst of all, are precisely those republics in which industry has been killed because wealth exposed its owner to spoliation. To these communities foreign capital now rarely comes, because it has been found that as soon as capital is employed so as to give substantial remuneration to those supplying it, it excites ignorant envy and hostility, which result in such oppressive action, within or without the law, as sooner or later to work a virtual confiscation. Every manifestation of feeling of this kind in our civilization should be crushed at the outset by the weight of a sensible public opinion.
From the standpoint of our material prosperity there is only one other thing as important as the discouragement of a spirit of envy and hostility toward honest business men, toward honest men of means; this is the discouragement of dishonest business men.