Therefore, I congratulate you with all my heart upon this meeting to-day. Therefore I esteem myself most fortunate in having the chance of addressing you. It is a very good thing to attend to the material side of life. We must in the first instance attend to our material prosperity. Unless we have that as a foundation we can not build up any higher kind of life. But we shall lead a miserable and sordid life if we spend our whole time in doing nothing but attending to our material needs. If the building up of the railroads, of the farms, of the factories, of the industrial centres, means nothing whatever but an increase in the instruments of production and an increase in the fevered haste with which those instruments are used, progress amounts to but a little thing. If, however, the developing of our material prosperity is to serve as a foundation upon which we raise a higher, a purer, a fuller, a better life, then indeed things are well with the Republic. If as our wealth increases the wisdom of our use of the wealth increases in even greater proportion, then the wealth has justified its existence many times over. If with the industry, the skill, the hardihood, of those whom I am addressing and their fellows, nothing comes beyond a selfish desire each to grasp for himself whatever he can of material enjoyment, then the outlook for the future is indeed grave, then the advantages of living in the twentieth century surrounded by all our modern improvements, our modern symbols of progress, is indeed small. But if we mean to make of each fresh development in the way of material betterment a step toward a fresh development in moral and spiritual betterment, then we are to be congratulated.
To me the future seems full of hope because, although there are many conflicting tendencies, and although some of these tendencies of our present life are for evil, yet, on the whole the tendencies for good are in the ascendency. And I greet this audience, this great body of delegates, with peculiar pleasure because they are men who embody, and embody by the very fact of their presence here, the two essential sets of qualities of which I have been speaking. They embody the capacity for self-help with the desire mutually to help one the other. You have several qualities I like. You have sound bodies. Your profession is not one that can be carried on, at least in some of its branches, without the sound body. You have sound minds, and that is better than sound bodies; and finally, the fact that you are here, the fact that you have done what you have done, shows that you have that which counts for more than body, for more than mind—character.
I congratulate you upon what you are doing for yourselves, and I congratulate you even more upon what you are doing for all men who hope to see the day brought nearer when the people of all nations, shall realize—not merely talk of, but realize—what the essence of brotherhood is. I congratulate you, as I say, not only because you are bettering yourselves, but because to you, for your good fortune, it is given to better others, to teach, in the way in which teaching is most effective, not merely by precept but by action. The railroad men of this country are a body entitled to the well wishes of their fellow-men in any event, but peculiarly is this true of the railroad men of the country who join in such work as that of the Young Men’s Christian Associations, because they are showing by their actions—and oh, how much louder actions speak than words!—that it is not only possible, but very, very possible and easy to combine the manliness which makes a man able to do his own share of the world’s work, with that fine and lofty love of one’s fellow-men which makes you able to come together with your fellows and work hand in hand with them for the common good of mankind in general.
FROM ADDRESS AT DENVER, COL., MAY 4, 1903
Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, and you, my Fellow-Citizens:
Colorado has certain special interests which it shares with the group of States immediately around it. To my mind one of the best pieces of legislation put upon the statute books of the National Government of recent years was the irrigation act; an act under which we declare it to be the national policy that exactly as care is to be taken of the harbors and along the lower courses of the rivers, so in their upper courses care is to be taken by the Nation of the irrigation work to be done in connection with them.
Under that act a beginning has been made in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and the Territory of Arizona. There is bound to be disappointment here and there where people have built hopes without a quite sufficient warranty of fact behind. But good will surely come at once and wellnigh immeasurable good in the future from the policy which has thus been begun. In Colorado two-thirds of your products come from irrigated farms, and four years ago those products already surpassed fifteen million dollars. With the aid of the government far more can be done in the future even than has been done in the past. The object of the law is to provide small irrigated farms to actual settlers, to actual home-makers; the land is given away ultimately in small tracts under the terms of the homestead act, the settlers repaying the cost of bringing water to their lands in ten annual payments; and lands now in private ownership can be watered in small tracts by similar payments, but the law forbids the furnishing of water to large tracts, and the aim of the government is rigidly to prevent the acquisition of large rights for speculative purposes. The purpose of the law was, and that purpose is being absolutely carried out, to promote settlement and cultivation of small farms carefully tilled. Water made available under the terms of this law becomes appurtenant under the law to the land, and can not be disposed of without it, and thus monopoly and speculation in this vitally important commodity are prevented, or at least their evil effects minimized so far as the law or the administration of the law can bring that end about. This is the great factor in future success. The policy is a policy of encouragement to the home-maker, to the man who comes to establish his home, to bring up his children here as a citizen of the commonwealth, and his welfare is guarded by the union of the water and the land.
The government can not deal with large numbers individually. We have encouraged the formation of associations of water users, of cultivators of the soil in small tracts. The ultimate ownership and control of the irrigation works will pass away from the government into the hands of those users, those home-makers, who through their officers do the necessary business of their associations. The aim of the government is to give locally the ultimate control of water distributed and to leave neighborhood disputes to be settled locally; and that should be so as far as it is possible. The law protects vested rights; it prevents conflict with established laws or institutions; but of course it is important that the legislatures of the States should co-operate with the National Government. When the works are constructed to utilize the waters now wasted happy and prosperous homes will flourish where twenty years ago it would have seemed impossible that a man could live. It is a great national measure of benefit, and while, as I say, it is primarily to benefit the people of the mountain States and of the great plains, yet it will ultimately benefit the whole community. For, my fellow-countrymen, you can never afford to forget for one moment that in the long run anything that is of benefit to one part of our Republic is of necessity of benefit to all the Republic. The creation of new homes upon desert lands means greater prosperity for Colorado and the Rocky Mountain States, and inevitably their greater prosperity means greater prosperity for Eastern manufacturers, for Southern cotton growers, for all our people throughout the Union.
AT SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO, MAY 5, 1903
Mr. Governor, Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen: