The art of successful self-government is not an easy art for people or for individuals. It comes to our people here as the inheritance of ages of effort. It can be thrown away; it can be unlearned very easily, and it surely will be unlearned if we forget the vital need not merely of preaching, but of practicing both sets of virtues—if we forget the vital need of having the average citizen not only a good man, but a man.
It is a fine thing to have on the Supreme Court a man who dared venture all for the great prize of death in battle when the country called for him, and a man who, after the war was closed, did not content himself with living an ignoble life on the plea that he had done so well it was not necessary to do more, but who continued to do his duty as a citizen all the better because he had done it as a soldier; the man who remembered that duty done, to be of practical use, must serve not as an excuse for not doing further duty, but as an incentive, as a spur, to make him feel ashamed that his present or his future should fall short of his past.
So, Judge Harlan, I greet you personally, sir. I wish to express my own personal debt to you for your influence, for your example, but I wish far more, speaking as the representative of all our people, to express the infinite sense of obligation we have to you for having shown by your life what the type of fearless American citizenship should be.
RECEPTION OF A DELEGATION FROM THE NATIONAL BOARD OF TRADE, WASHINGTON, D. C., JANUARY 15, 1903
Mr. Randall, speaking for the delegation, said: Mr. President, we have come here merely to present ourselves and to make our annual call on the President of the United States. We thank you for meeting us.
The President responded: I shall not try to make you any speech. I wish simply to say what a very real pleasure it is to see you, and also to say this—that I am glad to see the meetings of the big business interests take place sometimes in Washington. Nothing can be better both for the business interests and for legislation than to have as close a touch as possible between the elective representatives here and the men whose welfare is so interwoven with what is done in the halls of Congress. It is a very great help to all of us to have you come here. I thank you for coming.
AT THE BANQUET OF THE YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION, NEW WILLARD HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D. C., JAN. 19, 1903
Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen:
It is no accident that we should meet here to celebrate a record of fifty years—that period which covers the half century which has seen the gigantic industrial change of the world, which has seen the fruition of the forces that have brought about a revolution, socially and industrially, within the fifty years such as was hardly seen within any preceding five centuries. Life has been very intense, has been carried on at a very high pressure, during that half century; more intense, carried on at a higher pressure, than ever before. That means of course that all the forces have been raised to a higher degree of power—the forces of evil, and, thank heaven, also the forces of good. If it had not been for the work of such organizations as this, for such organized effort as that represented by you here to-night, the immense material progress of the world during the past half century would have been a progress that would have told for ill for the nations, not for good. We can say with truth that we are better off than we were. We can say that the creed of those who have faith is the right creed as justified in present history, because side by side with this great material development, and with an even stronger rate of growth than the forces of evil, have grown the forces of good. If it had not been for the work done by those who founded this movement, and of course by all those who have taken part in similar movements, in all movements for good, in every movement for social betterment, for civic betterment, in every movement to make men decent and manly and strong—if it had not been for the work done by them, if they had sat supine and thought things would make themselves better, things would have become steadily worse. We see all around us people who say, “Oh, well, things will come out all right.” So they will; but not because there are men who are content to say that they will come out all right; but because there is a sufficient number of earnest men with the root of righteousness in them who are bound to do what will make them come out right.
The remarkable concentration of our lives during the last half century has rendered it possible for anything that is evil to manifest itself more strongly than ever before, and therefore made it necessary for us to see that the good has a corresponding development. A hundred years ago there was no such need for the Young Men’s Christian Associations, for the invaluable Young Women’s Christian Associations. Life was simpler. The temptation would come surely to every man, but it would not come so frequently and in so intense a form. As the forces of evil manifested themselves in stronger and stronger form they had to be met, if they were to be successfully grappled with, by organized effort, by the effort of the many, which must always be stronger than the effort of one; and the successful effort to combat the forces of evil had to take just such shape as has been given to the growth of the Young Men’s Christian Associations. It had to take the shape of combining decency and efficiency. There are many things that are so true that it seems almost trite to speak of them, and yet it is continually necessary to speak of them. There have been philanthropic movements led and supported by most excellent people, which, nevertheless, have produced results altogether incommensurable with the efforts spent, because they failed to combine as this movement has combined a recognition of the needs of human nature with a resolute effort to make that human nature better.