Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 3 (of 7)

by Theodore Roosevelt

A party is of worth only in so far as it promotes the national interest, and every official, high or low, can serve his party best by rendering to the people the best service of which he is capable. Effective government comes only as the result of the loyal co-operation of many different persons. The members of a legislative majority, the officers in the various departments of the Administration, and the Legislative and Executive branches as toward each other, must work together with subordination of self to the common end of successful government. We who have been intrusted with power as public servants during the past seven years of administration and legislation now come before the people content to be judged by our record of achievement. In the years that have gone by we have made the deed square with the word; and if we are continued in power we shall unswervingly follow out the great lines of public policy which the Republican party has already laid down; a public policy to which we are giving, and shall give, a united, and therefore an efficient, support.

In all of this we are more fortunate than our opponents, who now appeal for confidence on the ground, which some express and some seek to have confidentially understood, that if triumphant they may be trusted to prove false to every principle which in the last eight years they have laid down as vital, and to leave undisturbed those very acts of the Administration because of which they ask that the Administration itself be driven from power. Seemingly their present attitude as to their past record is that some of them were mistaken and others insincere. We make our appeal in a wholly different spirit. We are not constrained to keep silent on any vital question; we are divided on no vital question; our policy is continuous, and is the same for all sections and localities. There is nothing experimental about the Government we ask the people to continue in power, for our performance in the past, our proved governmental efficiency, is a guarantee as to our promises for the future. Our opponents, either openly or secretly, according to their several temperaments, now ask the people to trust their present promises in consideration of the fact that they intend to treat their past promises as null and void. We know our own minds and we have kept of the same mind for a sufficient length of time to give to our policy coherence and sanity. In such a fundamental matter as the enforcement of the law we do not have to depend upon promises, but merely to ask that our record be taken as an earnest of what we shall continue to do. In dealing with the great organizations known as trusts, we do not have to explain why the laws were not enforced, but to point out that they actually have been enforced, and that legislation has been enacted to increase the effectiveness of their enforcement. We do not have to propose to “turn the rascals out,” for we have shown in very deed that whenever by diligent investigation a public official can be found who has betrayed his trust he will be punished to the full extent of the law without regard to whether he was appointed under a Republican or a Democratic Administration. This is the efficient way to turn the rascals out and to keep them out, and it has the merit of sincerity. Moreover, the betrayals of trust in the last seven years have been insignificant in number when compared with the extent of the public service. Never has the administration of the Government been on a cleaner and higher level; never has the public work of the Nation been done more honestly and efficiently.

Assuredly it is unwise to change the policies which have worked so well and which are now working so well. Prosperity has come at home. The national honor and interest have been upheld abroad. We have placed the finances of the Nation upon a sound gold basis. We have done this with the aid of many who were formerly our opponents, but who would neither openly support nor silently acquiesce in the heresy of unsound finance; and we have done it against the convinced and violent opposition of the mass of our present opponents who still refuse to recant the unsound opinions which for the moment they think it inexpedient to assert. We know what we mean when we speak of an honest and stable currency. We mean the same thing from year to year. We do not have to avoid definite and conclusive committal on the most important issue which has recently been before the people, and which may at any time in the near future be before them again. Upon the principles which underlie this issue the convictions of half of our number do not clash with those of the other half. So long as the Republican party is in power the gold standard is settled, not as a matter of temporary political expediency, not because of shifting conditions in the production of gold in certain mining centres, but in accordance with what we regard as the fundamental principles of national morality and wisdom.

Under the financial legislation which we have enacted there is now ample circulation for every business need; and every dollar of this circulation is worth a dollar in gold. We have reduced the interest-bearing debt, and in still larger measure the interest on that debt. All of the war taxes imposed during the Spanish War have been removed with a view to relieve the people and to prevent the accumulation of an unnecessary surplus. The result is that hardly ever before have the expenditures and income of the Government so closely corresponded. In the fiscal year that has just closed the excess of income over the ordinary expenditures was nine millions of dollars. This does not take account of the fifty millions expended out of the accumulated surplus for the purchase of the Isthmian Canal. It is an extraordinary proof of the sound financial condition of the Nation that instead of following the usual course in such matters and throwing the burden upon posterity by an issue of bonds, we were able to make the payment outright and yet after it to have in the treasury a surplus of one hundred and sixty-one millions. Moreover, we were able to pay this fifty millions of dollars out of hand without causing the slightest disturbance to business conditions.

We have enacted a tariff law under which during the past few years the country has attained a height of material well-being never before reached. Wages are higher than ever before. That whenever the need arises there should be a readjustment of the tariff schedules is undoubted; but such changes can with safety be made only by those whose devotion to the principle of a protective tariff is beyond question; for otherwise the changes would amount not to readjustment, but to repeal. The readjustment when made must maintain and not destroy the protective principle. To the farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer this is vital; but perhaps no other man is so much interested as the wage-worker in the maintenance of our present economic system, both as regards the finances and the tariff. The standard of living of our wage-workers is higher than that of any other country, and it can not so remain unless we have a protective tariff which shall always keep as a minimum a rate of duty sufficient to cover the difference between the labor cost here and abroad. Those who, like our opponents, “denounce protection as a robbery” thereby explicitly commit themselves to the proposition that if they were to revise the tariff no heed would be paid to the necessity of meeting this difference between the standards of living for wage-workers here and in other countries; and therefore on this point their antagonism to our position is fundamental. Here again we ask that their promises and ours be judged by what has been done in the immediate past. We ask that sober and sensible men compare the workings of the present tariff law, and the conditions which obtain under it, with the workings of the preceding tariff law of 1894 and the conditions which that tariff of 1894 helped to bring about.

We believe in reciprocity with foreign nations on the terms outlined in President McKinley’s last speech, which urged the extension of our foreign markets by reciprocal agreements whenever they could be made without injury to American industry and labor. It is a singular fact that the only great reciprocity treaty recently adopted—that with Cuba—was finally opposed almost alone by the representatives of the very party which now states that it favors reciprocity. And here again we ask that the worth of our words be judged by comparing their deeds with ours. On this Cuban reciprocity treaty there were at the outset grave differences of opinion among ourselves; and the notable thing in the negotiation and ratification of the treaty, and in the legislation which carried it into effect, was the highly practical manner in which without sacrifice of principle these differences of opinion were reconciled. There was no rupture of a great party, but an excellent practical outcome, the result of the harmonious co-operation of two successive Presidents and two successive Congresses. This is an illustration of the governing capacity which entitles us to the confidence of the people not only in our purposes but in our practical ability to achieve those purposes. Judging by the history of the last twelve years, down to this very month, is there justification for believing that under similar circumstances and with similar initial differences of opinion, our opponents would have achieved any practical result?

We have already shown in actual fact that our policy is to do fair and equal justice to all men, paying no heed to whether a man is rich or poor; paying no heed to his race, his creed, or his birthplace.

We recognize the organization of capital and the organization of labor as natural outcomes of our industrial system. Each kind of organization is to be favored so long as it acts in a spirit of justice and of regard for the rights of others. Each is to be granted the full protection of the law, and each in turn is to be held to a strict obedience to the law; for no man is above it and no man below it. The humblest individual is to have his rights safeguarded as scrupulously as those of the strongest organization, for each is to receive justice, no more and no less. The problems with which we have to deal in our modern industrial and social life are manifold; but the spirit in which it is necessary to approach their solution is simply the spirit of honesty, of courage, and of common-sense.

In inaugurating the great work of irrigation in the West the Administration has been enabled by Congress to take one of the longest strides ever taken under our Government toward utilizing our vast national domain for the settler, the actual homemaker.

Ever since this Continent was discovered the need of an Isthmian Canal to connect the Pacific and the Atlantic has been recognized; and ever since the birth of our Nation such a canal has been planned. At last the dream has become a reality. The Isthmian Canal is now being built by the Government of the United States. We conducted the negotiation for its construction with the nicest and most scrupulous honor, and in a spirit of the largest generosity toward those through whose territory it was to run. Every sinister effort which could be devised by the spirit of faction or the spirit of self-interest was made in order to defeat the treaty with Panama and thereby prevent the consummation of this work. The construction of the canal is now an assured fact; but most certainly it is unwise to intrust the carrying out of so momentous a policy to those who have endeavored to defeat the whole undertaking.