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President[ Theodore Roosevelt

         Date[ December 8, 1908

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

FINANCES.

The financial standing of the Nation at the present time is excellent,

and the financial management of the Nation's interests by the

Government during the last seven years has shown the most satisfactory

results. But our currency system is imperfect, and it is earnestly to

be hoped that the Currency Commission will be able to propose a

thoroughly good system which will do away with the existing defects.

During the period from July 1, 1901, to September 30, 1908, there was

an increase in the amount of money in circulation of $902,991,399. The

increase in the per capita during this period was $7.06. Within this

time there were several occasions when it was necessary for the

Treasury Department to come to the relief of the money market by

purchases or redemptions of United States bonds; by increasing deposits

in national banks; by stimulating additional issues of national bank

notes, and by facilitating importations from abroad of gold. Our

imperfect currency system has made these proceedings necessary, and

they were effective until the monetary disturbance in the fall of 1907

immensely increased the difficulty of ordinary methods of relief. By

the middle of November the available working balance in the Treasury

had been reduced to approximately $5,000,000. Clearing house

associations throughout the country had been obliged to resort to the

expedient of issuing clearing house certificates, to be used as money.

In this emergency it was determined to invite subscriptions for

$50,000,000 Panama Canal bonds, and $100,000,000 three per cent

certificates of indebtedness authorized by the act of June 13, 1898. It

was proposed to re-deposit in the national banks the proceeds of these

issues, and to permit their use as a basis for additional circulating

notes of national banks. The moral effect of this procedure was so

great that it was necessary to issue only $24,631,980 of the Panama

Canal bonds and $15,436,500 of the certificates of indebtedness.

During the period from July 1, 1901, to September 30, 1908, the balance

between the net ordinary receipts and the net ordinary expenses of the

Government showed a surplus in the four years 1902, 1903, 1906 and

1907, and a deficit in the years 1904, 1905, 1908 and a fractional part

of the fiscal year 1909. The net result was a surplus of

$99,283,413.54. The financial operations of the Government during this

period, based upon these differences between receipts and expenditures,

resulted in a net reduction of the interest-bearing debt of the United

States from $987,141,040 to $897,253,990, notwithstanding that there

had been two sales of Panama Canal bonds amounting in the aggregate to

$54,631,980, and an issue of three per cent certificates of

indebtedness under the act of June 13, 1998, amounting to $15,436,500.

Refunding operations of the Treasury Department under the act of March

14, 1900, resulted in the conversion into two per cent consols of 1930

of $200,309,400 bonds bearing higher rates of interest. A decrease of

$8,687,956 in the annual interest charge resulted from these

operations.

In short, during the seven years and three months there has been a net

surplus of nearly one hundred millions of receipts over expenditures, a

reduction of the interest-bearing debt by ninety millions, in spite of

the extraordinary expense of the Panama Canal, and a saving of nearly

nine millions on the annual interest charge. This is an exceedingly

satisfactory showing, especially in view of the fact that during this

period the Nation has never hesitated to undertake any expenditure that

it regarded as necessary. There have been no new taxes and no increase

of taxes; on the contrary, some taxes have been taken off; there has

been a reduction of taxation.

CORPORATIONS.

As regards the great corporations engaged in interstate business, and

especially the railroad, I can only repeat what I have already again

and again said in my messages to the Congress, I believe that under the

interstate clause of the Constitution the United States has complete

and paramount right to control all agencies of interstate commerce, and

I believe that the National Government alone can exercise this right

with wisdom and effectiveness so as both to secure justice from, and to

do justice to, the great corporations which are the most important

factors in modern business. I believe that it is worse than folly to

attempt to prohibit all combinations as is done by the Sherman

anti-trust law, because such a law can be enforced only imperfectly and

unequally, and its enforcement works almost as much hardship as good. I

strongly advocate that instead of an unwise effort to prohibit all

combinations there shall be substituted a law which shall expressly

permit combinations which are in the interest of the public, but shall

at the same time give to some agency of the National Government full

power of control and supervision over them. One of the chief features

of this control should be securing entire publicity in all matters

which the public has a right to know, and furthermore, the power, not

by judicial but by executive action, to prevent or put a stop to every

form of improper favoritism or other wrongdoing.

The railways of the country should be put completely under the

Interstate Commerce Commission and removed from the domain of the

anti-trust law. The power of the Commission should be made

thoroughgoing, so that it could exercise complete supervision and

control over the issue of securities as well as over the raising and

lowering of rates. As regards rates, at least, this power should be

summary. The power to investigate the financial operations and accounts

of the railways has been one of the most valuable features in recent

legislation. Power to make combinations and traffic agreements should

be explicitly conferred upon the railroads, the permission of the

Commission being first gained and the combination or agreement being

published in all its details. In the interest of the public the

representatives of the public should have complete power to see that

the railroads do their duty by the public, and as a matter of course

this power should also be exercised so as to see that no injustice is

done to the railroads. The shareholders, the employees and the shippers

all have interests that must be guarded. It is to the interest of all

of them that no swindling stock speculation should be allowed, and that

there should be no improper issuance of securities. The guiding

intelligences necessary for the successful building and successful

management of railroads should receive ample remuneration; but no man

should be allowed to make money in connection with railroads out of

fraudulent over-capitalization and kindred stock-gambling performances;

there must be no defrauding of investors, oppression of the farmers and

business men who ship freight, or callous disregard of the rights and

needs of the employees. In addition to this the interests of the

shareholders, of the employees, and of the shippers should all be

guarded as against one another. To give any one of them undue and

improper consideration is to do injustice to the others. Rates must be

made as low as is compatible with giving proper returns to all the

employees of the railroad, from the highest to the lowest, and proper

returns to the shareholders; but they must not, for instance, be

reduced in such fashion as to necessitate a cut in the wages of the

employees or the abolition of the proper and legitimate profits of

honest shareholders.

Telegraph and telephone companies engaged in interstate business should

be put under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

It is very earnestly to be wished that our people, through their

representatives, should act in this matter. It is hard to say whether

most damage to the country at large would come from entire failure on

the part of the public to supervise and control the actions of the

great corporations, or from the exercise of the necessary governmental

power in a way which would do injustice and wrong to the corporations.

Both the preachers of an unrestricted individualism, and the preachers

of an oppression which would deny to able men of business the just

reward of their initiative and business sagacity, are advocating

policies that would be fraught with the gravest harm to the whole

country. To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying

corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the

effort to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be

ruinous to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to

secure in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing.

On the other hand, to attack these wrongs in that spirit of demagogy

which can see wrong only when committed by the man of wealth, and is

dumb and blind in the presence of wrong committed against men of

property or by men of no property, is exactly as evil as corruptly to

defend the wrongdoing of men of wealth. The war we wage must be waged

against misconduct, against wrongdoing wherever it is found; and we

must stand heartily for the rights of every decent man, whether he be a

man of great wealth or a man who earns his livelihood as a wage-worker

or a tiller of the soil.

It is to the interest of all of us that there should be a premium put

upon individual initiative and individual capacity, and an ample reward

for the great directing intelligences alone competent to manage the

great business operations of to-day. It is well to keep in mind that

exactly as the anarchist is the worst enemy of liberty and the

reactionary the worst enemy of order, so the men who defend the rights

of property have most to fear from the wrongdoers of great wealth, and

the men who are championing popular rights have most to fear from the

demagogues who in the name of popular rights would do wrong to and

oppress honest business men, honest men of wealth; for the success of

either type of wrongdoer necessarily invites a violent reaction against

the cause the wrongdoer nominally upholds. In point of danger to the

Nation there is nothing to choose between on the one hand the

corruptionist, the bribe-giver, the bribe-taker, the man who employs

his great talent to swindle his fellow-citizens on a large scale, and,

on the other hand, the preacher of class hatred, the man who, whether

from ignorance or from willingness to sacrifice his country to his

ambition, persuades well-meaning but wrong-headed men to try to destroy

the instruments upon which our prosperity mainly rests. Let each group

of men beware of and guard against the shortcomings to which that group

is itself most liable. Too often we see the business community in a

spirit of unhealthy class consciousness deplore the effort to hold to

account under the law the wealthy men who in their management of great

corporations, whether railroads, street railways, or other industrial

enterprises, have behaved in a way that revolts the conscience of the

plain, decent people. Such an attitude can not be condemned too

severely, for men of property should recognize that they jeopardize the

rights of property when they fail heartily to join in the effort to do

away with the abuses of wealth. On the other hand, those who advocate

proper control on behalf of the public, through the State, of these

great corporations, and of the wealth engaged on a giant scale in

business operations, must ever keep in mind that unless they do

scrupulous justice to the corporation, unless they permit ample profit,

and cordially encourage capable men of business so long as they act

with honesty, they are striking at the root of our national well-being;

for in the long run, under the mere pressure of material distress, the

people as a whole would probably go back to the reign of an

unrestricted individualism rather than submit to a control by the State

so drastic and so foolish, conceived in a spirit of such unreasonable

and narrow hostility to wealth, as to prevent business operations from

being profitable, and therefore to bring ruin upon the entire business

community, and ultimately upon the entire body of citizens.

The opposition to Government control of these great corporations makes

its most effective effort in the shape of an appeal to the old doctrine

of State's rights. Of course there are many sincere men who now believe

in unrestricted individualism in business, just as there were formerly

many sincere men who believed in slavery--that is, in the unrestricted

right of an individual to own another individual. These men do not by

themselves have great weight, however. The effective fight against

adequate Government control and supervision of individual, and

especially of corporate, wealth engaged in interstate business is

chiefly done under cover; and especially under cover of an appeal to

State's rights. It is not at all infrequent to read in the same speech

a denunciation of predatory wealth fostered by special privilege and

defiant of both the public welfare and law of the land, and a

denunciation of centralization in the Central Government of the power

to deal with this centralized and organized wealth. Of course the

policy set forth in such twin denunciations amounts to absolutely

nothing, for the first half is nullified by the second half. The chief

reason, among the many sound and compelling reasons, that led to the

formation of the National Government was the absolute need that the

Union, and not the several States, should deal with interstate and

foreign commerce; and the power to deal with interstate commerce was

granted absolutely and plenarily to the Central Government and was

exercised completely as regards the only instruments of interstate

commerce known in those days--the waterways, the highroads, as well as

the partnerships of individuals who then conducted all of what business

there was. Interstate commerce is now chiefly conducted by railroads;

and the great corporation has supplanted the mass of small partnerships

or individuals. The proposal to make the National Government supreme

over, and therefore to give it complete control over, the railroads and

other instruments of interstate commerce is merely a proposal to carry

out to the letter one of the prime purposes, if not the prime purpose,

for which the Constitution was rounded. It does not represent

centralization. It represents merely the acknowledgment of the patent

fact that centralization has already come in business. If this

irresponsible outside business power is to be controlled in the

interest of the general public it can only be controlled in one way--by

giving adequate power of control to the one sovereignty capable of

exercising such power--the National Government. Forty or fifty separate

state governments can not exercise that power over corporations doing

business in most or all of them; first, because they absolutely lack

the authority to deal with interstate business in any form; and second,

because of the inevitable conflict of authority sure to arise in the

effort to enforce different kinds of state regulation, often

inconsistent with one another and sometimes oppressive in themselves.

Such divided authority can not regulate commerce with wisdom and

effect. The Central Government is the only power which, without

oppression, can nevertheless thoroughly and adequately control and

supervise the large corporations. To abandon the effort for National

control means to abandon the effort for all adequate control and yet to

render likely continual bursts of action by State legislatures, which

can not achieve the purpose sought for, but which can do a great deal

of damage to the corporation without conferring any real benefit on the

public.

I believe that the more farsighted corporations are themselves coming

to recognize the unwisdom of the violent hostility they have displayed

during the last few years to regulation and control by the National

Government of combinations engaged in interstate business. The truth is

that we who believe in this movement of asserting and exercising a

genuine control, in the public interest, over these great corporations

have to contend against two sets of enemies, who, though nominally

opposed to one another, are really allies in preventing a proper

solution of the problem. There are, first, the big corporation men, and

the extreme individualists among business men, who genuinely believe in

utterly unregulated business that is, in the reign of plutocracy; and,

second, the men who, being blind to the economic movements of the day,

believe in a movement of repression rather than of regulation of

corporations, and who denounce both the power of the railroads and the

exercise of the Federal power which alone can really control the

railroads. Those who believe in efficient national control, on the

other hand, do not in the least object to combinations; do not in the

least object to concentration in business administration. On the

contrary, they favor both, with the all important proviso that there

shall be such publicity about their workings, and such thoroughgoing

control over them, as to insure their being in the interest, and not

against the interest, of the general public. We do not object to the

concentration of wealth and administration; but we do believe in the

distribution of the wealth in profits to the real owners, and in

securing to the public the full benefit of the concentrated

administration. We believe that with concentration in administration

there can come both be advantage of a larger ownership and of a more

equitable distribution of profits, and at the same time a better

service to the commonwealth. We believe that the administration should

be for the benefit of the many; and that greed and rascality, practiced

on a large scale, should be punished as relentlessly as if practiced on

a small scale.

We do not for a moment believe that the problem will be solved by any

short and easy method. The solution will come only by pressing various

concurrent remedies. Some of these remedies must lie outside the domain

of all government. Some must lie outside the domain of the Federal

Government. But there is legislation which the Federal Government alone

can enact and which is absolutely vital in order to secure the

attainment of our purpose. Many laws are needed. There should be

regulation by the National Government of the great interstate

corporations, including a simple method of account keeping, publicity,

supervision of the issue securities, abolition of rebates, and of

special privileges. There should be short time franchises for all

corporations engaged in public business; including the corporations

which get power from water rights. There should be National as well as

State guardianship of mines and forests. The labor legislation

hereinafter referred to should concurrently be enacted into law.

To accomplish this, means of course a certain increase in the use

of--not the creation of--power, by the Central Government. The power

already exists; it does not have to be created; the only question is

whether it shall be used or left idle--and meanwhile the corporations

over which the power ought to be exercised will not remain idle. Let

those who object to this increase in the use of the only power

available, the national power, be frank, and admit openly that they

propose to abandon any effort to control the great business

corporations and to exercise supervision over the accumulation and

distribution of wealth; for such supervision and control can only come

through this particular kind of increase of power. We no more believe

in that empiricism which demand, absolutely unrestrained individualism

than we do in that empiricism which clamors for a deadening socialism

which would destroy all individual initiative and would ruin the

country with a completeness that not even an unrestrained individualism

itself could achieve. The danger to American democracy lies not in the

least in the concentration of administrative power in responsible and

accountable hands. It lies in having the power insufficiently

concentrated, so that no one can be held responsible to the people for

its use. Concentrated power is palpable, visible, responsible, easily

reached, quickly held to account. Power scattered through many

administrators, many legislators, many men who work behind and through

legislators and administrators, is impalpable, is unseen, is

irresponsible, can not be reached, can not be held to account.

Democracy is in peril wherever the administration of political power is

scattered among a variety of men who work in secret, whose very names

are unknown to the common people. It is not in peril from any man who

derives authority from the people, who exercises it in sight of the

people, and who is from time to time compelled to give an account of

its exercise to the people.

LABOR.

There are many matters affecting labor and the status of the

wage-worker to which I should like to draw your attention, but an

exhaustive discussion of the problem in all its aspects is not now

necessary. This administration is nearing its end; and, moreover, under

our form of government the solution of the problem depends upon the

action of the States as much as upon the action of the Nation.

Nevertheless, there are certain considerations which I wish to set

before you, because I hope that our people will more and more keep them

in mind. A blind and ignorant resistance to every effort for the reform

of abuses and for the readjustment of society to modern industrial

conditions represents not true conservatism, but an incitement to the

wildest radicalism; for wise radicalism and wise conservatism go hand

in hand, one bent on progress, the other bent on seeing that no change

is made unless in the right direction. I believe in a steady effort, or

perhaps it would be more accurate to say in steady efforts in many

different directions, to bring about a condition of affairs under which

the men who work with hand or with brain, the laborers, the

superintendents, the men who produce for the market and the men who

find a market for the articles produced, shall own a far greater share

than at present of the wealth they produce, and be enabled to invest it

in the tools and instruments by which all work is carried on. As far as

possible I hope to see a frank recognition of the advantages conferred

by machinery, organization, and division of labor, accompanied by an

effort to bring about a larger share in the ownership by wage-worker of

railway, mill and factory. In farming, this simply means that we wish

to see the farmer own his own land; we do not wish to see the farms so

large that they become the property of absentee landlords who farm them

by tenants, nor yet so small that the farmer becomes like a European

peasant. Again, the depositors in our savings banks now number over

one-tenth of our entire population. These are all capitalists, who

through the savings banks loan their money to the workers--that is, in

many cases to themselves--to carry on their various industries. The

more we increase their number, the more we introduce the principles of

cooperation into our industry. Every increase in the number of small

stockholders in corporations is a good thing, for the same reasons; and

where the employees are the stockholders the result is particularly

good. Very much of this movement must be outside of anything that can

be accomplished by legislation; but legislation can do a good deal.

Postal savings banks will make it easy for the poorest to keep their

savings in absolute safety. The regulation of the national highways

must be such that they shall serve all people with equal justice.

Corporate finances must be supervised so as to make it far safer than

at present for the man of small means to invest his money in stocks.

There must be prohibition of child labor, diminution of woman labor,

shortening of hours of all mechanical labor; stock watering should be

prohibited, and stock gambling so far as is possible discouraged. There

should be a progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes. Industrial

education should be encouraged. As far as possible we should lighten

the burden of taxation on the small man. We should put a premium upon

thrift, hard work, and business energy; but these qualities cease to be

the main factors in accumulating a fortune long before that fortune

reaches a point where it would be seriously affected by any inheritance

tax such as I propose. It is eminently right that the Nation should fix

the terms upon which the great fortunes are inherited. They rarely do

good and they often do harm to those who inherit them in their

entirety.

PROTECTION FOR WAGEWORKERS.

The above is the merest sketch, hardly even a sketch in outline, of the

reforms for which we should work. But there is one matter with which

the Congress should deal at this session. There should no longer be any

paltering with the question of taking care of the wage-workers who,

under our present industrial system, become killed, crippled, or worn

out as part of the regular incidents of a given business. The majority

of wageworkers must have their rights secured for them by State action;

but the National Government should legislate in thoroughgoing and

far-reaching fashion not only for all employees of the National

Government, but for all persons engaged in interstate commerce. The

object sought for could be achieved to a measurable degree, as far as

those killed or crippled are concerned, by proper employers' liability

laws. As far as concerns those who have been worn out, I call your

attention to the fact that definite steps toward providing old-age

pensions have been taken in many of our private industries. These may

be indefinitely extended through voluntary association and contributory

schemes, or through the agency of savings banks, as under the recent

Massachusetts plan. To strengthen these practical measures should be

our immediate duty; it is not at present necessary to consider the

larger and more general governmental schemes that most European

governments have found themselves obliged to adopt.

Our present system, or rather no system, works dreadful wrong, and is

of benefit to only one class of people--the lawyers. When a workman is

injured what he needs is not an expensive and doubtful lawsuit, but the

certainty of relief through immediate administrative action. The number

of accidents which result in the death or crippling of wageworkers, in

the Union at large, is simply appalling; in a very few years it runs up

a total far in excess of the aggregate of the dead and wounded in any

modern war. No academic theory about "freedom of contract" or

"constitutional liberty to contract" should be permitted to interfere

with this and similar movements. Progress in civilization has

everywhere meant a limitation and regulation of contract. I call your

especial attention to the bulletin of the Bureau of Labor which gives a

statement of the methods of treating the unemployed in European

countries, as this is a subject which in Germany, for instance, is

treated in connection with making provision for worn-out and crippled

workmen.

Pending a thoroughgoing investigation and action there is certain

legislation which should be enacted at once. The law, passed at the

last session of the Congress, granting compensation to certain classes

of employees of the Government, should be extended to include all

employees of the Government and should be made more liberal in its

terms. There is no good ground for the distinction made in the law

between those engaged in hazardous occupations and those not so

engaged. If a man is injured or killed in any line of work, it was

hazardous in his case. Whether 1 per cent or 10 per cent of those

following a given occupation actually suffer injury or death ought not

to have any bearing on the question of their receiving compensation. It

is a grim logic which says to an injured employee or to the dependents

of one killed that he or they are entitled to no compensation because

very few people other than he have been injured or killed in that

occupation. Perhaps one of the most striking omissions in the law is

that it does not embrace peace officers and others whose lives may be

sacrificed in enforcing the laws of the United States. The terms of the

act providing compensation should be made more liberal than in the

present act. A year's compensation is not adequate for a wage-earner's

family in the event of his death by accident in the course of his

employment. And in the event of death occurring, say, ten or eleven

months after the accident, the family would only receive as

compensation the equivalent of one or two months' earnings. In this

respect the generosity of the United States towards its employees

compares most unfavorably with that of every country in Europe--even

the poorest.

The terms of the act are also a hardship in prohibiting payment in

cases where the accident is in any way due to the negligence of the

employee. It is inevitable that daily familiarity with danger will lead

men to take chances that can be construed into negligence. So well is

this recognized that in practically all countries in the civilized

world, except the United States, only a great degree of negligence acts

as a bar to securing compensation. Probably in no other respect is our

legislation, both State and National, so far behind practically the

entire civilized world as in the matter of liability and compensation

for accidents in industry. It is humiliating that at European

international congresses on accidents the United States should be

singled out as the most belated among the nations in respect to

employers' liability legislation. This Government is itself a large

employer of labor, and in its dealings with its employees it should set

a standard in this country which would place it on a par with the most

progressive countries in Europe. The laws of the United States in this

respect and the laws of European countries have been summarized in a

recent Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, and no American who reads this

summary can fail to be struck by the great contrast between our

practices and theirs--a contrast not in any sense to our credit.

The Congress should without further delay pass a model employers'

liability law for the District of Columbia. The employers' liability

act recently declared unconstitutional, on account of apparently

including in its provisions employees engaged in intrastate commerce as

well as those engaged in interstate commerce, has been held by the

local courts to be still in effect so far as its provisions apply to

District of Columbia. There should be no ambiguity on this point. If

there is any doubt on the subject, the law should be reenacted with

special reference to the District of Columbia. This act, however,

applies only to employees of common carriers. In all other occupations

the liability law of the District is the old common law. The severity

and injustice of the common law in this matter has been in some degree

or another modified in the majority of our States, and the only

jurisdiction under the exclusive control of the Congress should be

ahead and not behind the States of the Union in this respect. A

comprehensive employers' liability law should be passed for the

District of Columbia.

I renew my recommendation made in a previous message that half-holidays

be granted during summer to all wageworkers in Government employ.

I also renew my recommendation that the principle of the eight-hour day

should as rapidly and as far as practicable be extended to the entire

work being carried on by the Government; the present law should be

amended to embrace contracts on those public works which the present

wording of the act seems to exclude.

THE COURTS.

I most earnestly urge upon the Congress the duty of increasing the

totally inadequate salaries now given to our Judges. On the whole there

is no body of public servants who do as valuable work, nor whose

moneyed reward is so inadequate compared to their work. Beginning with

the Supreme Court, the Judges should have their salaries doubled. It is

not befitting the dignity of the Nation that its most honored public

servants should be paid sums so small compared to what they would earn

in private life that the performance of public service by them implies

an exceedingly heavy pecuniary sacrifice.

It is earnestly to be desired that some method should be devised for

doing away with the long delays which now obtain in the administration

of justice, and which operate with peculiar severity against persons of

small means, and favor only the very criminals whom it is most

desirable to punish. These long delays in the final decisions of cases

make in the aggregate a crying evil; and a remedy should be devised.

Much of this intolerable delay is due to improper regard paid to

technicalities which are a mere hindrance to justice. In some noted

recent cases this over-regard for technicalities has resulted in a

striking denial of justice, and flagrant wrong to the body politic.

At the last election certain leaders of organized labor made a violent

and sweeping attack upon the entire judiciary of the country, an attack

couched in such terms as to include the most upright, honest and

broad-minded judges, no less than those of narrower mind and more

restricted outlook. It was the kind of attack admirably fitted to

prevent any successful attempt to reform abuses of the judiciary,

because it gave the champions of the unjust judge their eagerly desired

opportunity to shift their ground into a championship of just judges

who were unjustly assailed. Last year, before the House Committee on

the Judiciary, these same labor leaders formulated their demands,

specifying the bill that contained them, refusing all compromise,

stating they wished the principle of that bill or nothing. They

insisted on a provision that in a labor dispute no injunction should

issue except to protect a property right, and specifically provided

that the right to carry on business should not be construed as a

property right; and in a second provision their bill made legal in a

labor dispute any act or agreement by or between two or more persons

that would not have been unlawful if done by a single person. In other

words, this bill legalized blacklisting and boycotting in every form,

legalizing, for instance, those forms of the secondary boycott which

the anthracite coal strike commission so unreservedly condemned; while

the right to carry on a business was explicitly taken out from under

that protection which the law throws over property. The demand was made

that there should be trial by jury in contempt cases, thereby most

seriously impairing the authority of the courts. All this represented a

course of policy which, if carried out, would mean the enthronement of

class privilege in its crudest and most brutal form, and the

destruction of one of the most essential functions of the judiciary in

all civilized lands.

The violence of the crusade for this legislation, and its complete

failure, illustrate two truths which it is essential our people should

learn. In the first place, they ought to teach the workingman, the

laborer, the wageworker, that by demanding what is improper and

impossible he plays into the hands of his foes. Such a crude and

vicious attack upon the courts, even if it were temporarily successful,

would inevitably in the end cause a violent reaction and would band the

great mass of citizens together, forcing them to stand by all the

judges, competent and incompetent alike, rather than to see the wheels

of justice stopped. A movement of this kind can ultimately result in

nothing but damage to those in whose behalf it is nominally undertaken.

This is a most healthy truth, which it is wise for all our people to

learn. Any movement based on that class hatred which at times assumes

the name of "class consciousness" is certain ultimately to fail, and if

it temporarily succeeds, to do far-reaching damage. "Class

consciousness," where it is merely another name for the odious vice of

class selfishness, is equally noxious whether in an employer's

association or in a workingman's association. The movement in question

was one in which the appeal was made to all workingmen to vote

primarily, not as American citizens, but as individuals of a certain

class in society. Such an appeal in the first place revolts the more

high-minded and far-sighted among the persons to whom it is addressed,

and in the second place tends to arouse a strong antagonism among all

other classes of citizens, whom it therefore tends to unite against the

very organization on whose behalf it is issued. The result is therefore

unfortunate from every standpoint. This healthy truth, by the way, will

be learned by the socialists if they ever succeed in establishing in

this country an important national party based on such class

consciousness and selfish class interest.

The wageworkers, the workingmen, the laboring men of the country, by

the way in which they repudiated the effort to get them to cast their

votes in response to an appeal to class hatred, have emphasized their

sound patriotism and Americanism. The whole country has cause to fell

pride in this attitude of sturdy independence, in this uncompromising

insistence upon acting simply as good citizens, as good Americans,

without regard to fancied--and improper--class interests. Such an

attitude is an object-lesson in good citizenship to the entire nation.

But the extreme reactionaries, the persons who blind themselves to the

wrongs now and then committed by the courts on laboring men, should

also think seriously as to what such a movement as this portends. The

judges who have shown themselves able and willing effectively to check

the dishonest activity of the very rich man who works iniquity by the

mismanagement of corporations, who have shown themselves alert to do

justice to the wageworker, and sympathetic with the needs of the mass

of our people, so that the dweller in the tenement houses, the man who

practices a dangerous trade, the man who is crushed by excessive hours

of labor, feel that their needs are understood by the courts--these

judges are the real bulwark of the courts; these judges, the judges of

the stamp of the president-elect, who have been fearless in opposing

labor when it has gone wrong, but fearless also in holding to strict

account corporations that work iniquity, and far-sighted in seeing that

the workingman gets his rights, are the men of all others to whom we

owe it that the appeal for such violent and mistaken legislation has

fallen on deaf ears, that the agitation for its passage proved to be

without substantial basis. The courts are jeopardized primarily by the

action of those Federal and State judges who show inability or

unwillingness to put a stop to the wrongdoing of very rich men under

modern industrial conditions, and inability or unwillingness to give

relief to men of small means or wageworkers who are crushed down by

these modern industrial conditions; who, in other words, fail to

understand and apply the needed remedies for the new wrongs produced by

the new and highly complex social and industrial civilization which has

grown up in the last half century.

The rapid changes in our social and industrial life which have attended

this rapid growth have made it necessary that, in applying to concrete

cases the great rule of right laid down in our Constitution, there

should be a full understanding and appreciation of the new conditions

to which the rules are to be applied. What would have been an

infringement upon liberty half a century ago may be the necessary

safeguard of liberty to-day. What would have been an injury to property

then may be necessary to the enjoyment of property now. Every judicial

decision involves two terms--one, as interpretation of the law; the

other, the understanding of the facts to which it is to be applied. The

great mass of our judicial officers are, I believe, alive to those

changes of conditions which so materially affect the performance of

their judicial duties. Our judicial system is sound and effective at

core, and it remains, and must ever be maintained, as the safeguard of

those principles of liberty and justice which stand at the foundation

of American institutions; for, as Burke finely said, when liberty and

justice are separated, neither is safe. There are, however, some

members of the judicial body who have lagged behind in their

understanding of these great and vital changes in the body politic,

whose minds have never been opened to the new applications of the old

principles made necessary by the new conditions. Judges of this stamp

do lasting harm by their decisions, because they convince poor men in

need of protection that the courts of the land are profoundly ignorant

of and out of sympathy with their needs, and profoundly indifferent or

hostile to any proposed remedy. To such men it seems a cruel mockery to

have any court decide against them on the ground that it desires to

preserve "liberty" in a purely technical form, by withholding liberty

in any real and constructive sense. It is desirable that the

legislative body should possess, and wherever necessary exercise, the

power to determine whether in a given case employers and employees are

not on an equal footing, so that the necessities of the latter compel

them to submit to such exactions as to hours and conditions of labor as

unduly to tax their strength; and only mischief can result when such

determination is upset on the ground that there must be no

"interference with the liberty to contract"--often a merely academic

"liberty," the exercise of which is the negation of real liberty.

There are certain decisions by various courts which have been

exceedingly detrimental to the rights of wageworkers. This is true of

all the decisions that decide that men and women are, by the

Constitution, "guaranteed their liberty" to contract to enter a

dangerous occupation, or to work an undesirable or improper number of

hours, or to work in unhealthy surroundings; and therefore can not

recover damages when maimed in that occupation and can not be forbidden

to work what the legislature decides is an excessive number of hours,

or to carry on the work under conditions which the legislature decides

to be unhealthy. The most dangerous occupations are often the poorest

paid and those where the hours of work are longest; and in many cases

those who go into them are driven by necessity so great that they have

practically no alternative. Decisions such as those alluded to above

nullify the legislative effort to protect the wage-workers who most

need protection from those employers who take advantage of their

grinding need. They halt or hamper the movement for securing better and

more equitable conditions of labor. The talk about preserving to the

misery-hunted beings who make contracts for such service their

"liberty" to make them, is either to speak in a spirit of heartless

irony or else to show an utter lack of knowledge of the conditions of

life among the great masses of our fellow-countrymen, a lack which

unfits a judge to do good service just as it would unfit any executive

or legislative officer.

There is also, I think, ground for the belief that substantial

injustice is often suffered by employees in consequence of the custom

of courts issuing temporary injunctions without notice to them, and

punishing them for contempt of court in instances where, as a matter of

fact, they have no knowledge of any proceedings. Outside of organized

labor there is a widespread feeling that this system often works great

injustice to wageworkers when their efforts to better their working

condition result in industrial disputes. A temporary injunction

procured ex parte may as a matter of fact have all the effect of a

permanent injunction in causing disaster to the wageworkers' side in

such a dispute. Organized labor is chafing under the unjust restraint

which comes from repeated resort to this plan of procedure. Its

discontent has been unwisely expressed, and often improperly expressed,

but there is a sound basis for it, and the orderly and law-abiding

people of a community would be in a far stronger position for upholding

the courts if the undoubtedly existing abuses could be provided

against.

Such proposals as those mentioned above as advocated by the extreme

labor leaders contain the vital error of being class legislation of the

most offensive kind, and even if enacted into law I believe that the

law would rightly be held unconstitutional. Moreover, the labor people

are themselves now beginning to invoke the use of the power of

injunction. During the last ten years, and within my own knowledge, at

least fifty injunctions have been obtained by labor unions in New York

City alone, most of them being to protect the union label (a "property

right"), but some being obtained for other reasons against employers.

The power of injunction is a great equitable remedy, which should on no

account be destroyed. But safeguards should be erected against its

abuse. I believe that some such provisions as those I advocated a year

ago for checking the abuse of the issuance of temporary injunctions

should be adopted. In substance, provision should be made that no

injunction or temporary restraining order issue otherwise than on

notice, except where irreparable injury would otherwise result; and in

such case a hearing on the merits of the order should be had within a

short fixed period, and, if not then continued after hearing, it should

forthwith lapse. Decisions should be rendered immediately, and the

chance of delay minimized in every way. Moreover, I believe that the

procedure should be sharply defined, and the judge required minutely to

state the particulars both of his action and of his reasons therefor,

so that the Congress can, if it desires, examine and investigate the

same.

The chief lawmakers in our country may be, and often are, the judges,

because they are the final seat of authority. Every time they interpret

contract, property, vested rights, due process of law, liberty, they

necessarily enact into law parts of a system of social philosophy, and

as such interpretation is fundamental, they give direction to all

law-making. The decisions of the courts on economic and social

questions depend upon their economic and social philosophy; and for the

peaceful progress of our people during the twentieth century we shall

owe most to those judges who hold to a twentieth century economic and

social philosophy and not to a long outgrown philosophy, which was

itself the product of primitive economic conditions. Of course a

judge's views on progressive social philosophy are entirely second in

importance to his possession of a high and fine character; which means

the possession of such elementary virtues as honesty, courage, and

fair-mindedness. The judge who owes his election to pandering to

demagogic sentiments or class hatreds and prejudices, and the judge who

owes either his election or his appointment to the money or the favor

of a great corporation, are alike unworthy to sit on the bench, are

alike traitors to the people; and no profundity of legal learning, or

correctness of abstract conviction on questions of public policy, can

serve as an offset to such shortcomings. But it is also true that

judges, like executives and legislators, should hold sound views on the

questions of public policy which are of vital interest to the people.

The legislators and executives are chosen to represent the people in

enacting and administering the laws. The judges are not chosen to

represent the people in this sense. Their function is to interpret the

laws. The legislators are responsible for the laws; the judges for the

spirit in which they interpret and enforce the laws. We stand aloof

from the reckless agitators who would make the judges mere pliant tools

of popular prejudice and passion; and we stand aloof from those equally

unwise partisans of reaction and privilege who deny the proposition

that, inasmuch as judges are chosen to serve the interests of the whole

people, they should strive to find out what those interests are, and,

so far as they conscientiously can, should strive to give effect to

popular conviction when deliberately and duly expressed by the

lawmaking body. The courts are to be highly commended and staunchly

upheld when they set their faces against wrongdoing or tyranny by a

majority; but they are to be blamed when they fail to recognize under a

government like ours the deliberate judgment of the majority as to a

matter of legitimate policy, when duly expressed by the legislature.

Such lawfully expressed and deliberate judgment should be given effect

by the courts, save in the extreme and exceptional cases where there

has been a clear violation of a constitutional provision. Anything like

frivolity or wantonness in upsetting such clearly taken governmental

action is a grave offense against the Republic. To protest against

tyranny, to protect minorities from oppression, to nullify an act

committed in a spasm of popular fury, is to render a service to the

Republic. But for the courts to arrogate to themselves functions which

properly belong to the legislative bodies is all wrong, and in the end

works mischief. The people should not be permitted to pardon evil and

slipshod legislation on the theory that the court will set it right;

they should be taught that the right way to get rid of a bad law is to

have the legislature repeal it, and not to have the courts by ingenious

hair-splitting nullify it. A law may be unwise and improper; but it

should not for these reasons be declared unconstitutional by a strained

interpretation, for the result of such action is to take away from the

people at large their sense of responsibility and ultimately to destroy

their capacity for orderly self restraint and self government. Under

such a popular government as ours, rounded on the theory that in the

long run the will of the people is supreme, the ultimate safety of the

Nation can only rest in training and guiding the people so that what

they will shall be right, and not in devising means to defeat their

will by the technicalities of strained construction.

For many of the shortcomings of justice in our country our people as a

whole are themselves to blame, and the judges and juries merely bear

their share together with the public as a whole. It is discreditable to

us as a people that there should be difficulty in convicting murderers,

or in bringing to justice men who as public servants have been guilty

of corruption, or who have profited by the corruption of public

servants. The result is equally unfortunate, whether due to

hairsplitting technicalities in the interpretation of law by judges, to

sentimentality and class consciousness on the part of juries, or to

hysteria and sensationalism in the daily press. For much of this

failure of justice no responsibility whatever lies on rich men as such.

We who make up the mass of the people can not shift the responsibility

from our own shoulders. But there is an important part of the failure

which has specially to do with inability to hold to proper account men

of wealth who behave badly.

The chief breakdown is in dealing with the new relations that arise

from the mutualism, the interdependence of our time. Every new social

relation begets a new type of wrongdoing--of sin, to use an

old-fashioned word--and many years always elapse before society is able

to turn this sin into crime which can be effectively punished at law.

During the lifetime of the older men now alive the social relations

have changed far more rapidly than in the preceding two centuries. The

immense growth of corporations, of business done by associations, and

the extreme strain and pressure of modern life, have produced

conditions which render the public confused as to who its really

dangerous foes are; and among the public servants who have not only

shared this confusion, but by some of their acts have increased it, are

certain judges. Marked inefficiency has been shown in dealing with

corporations and in re-settling the proper attitude to be taken by the

public not only towards corporations, but towards labor and towards the

social questions arising out of the factory system and the enormous

growth of our great cities.

The huge wealth that has been accumulated by a few individuals of

recent years, in what has amounted to a social and industrial

revolution, has been as regards some of these individuals made possible

only by the improper use of the modern corporation. A certain type of

modern corporation, with its officers and agents, its many issues of

securities, and its constant consolidation with allied undertakings,

finally becomes an instrument so complex as to contain a greater number

of elements that, under various judicial decisions, lend themselves to

fraud and oppression than any device yet evolved in the human brain.

Corporations are necessary instruments of modern business. They have

been permitted to become a menace largely because the governmental

representatives of the people have worked slowly in providing for

adequate control over them.

The chief offender in any given case may be an executive, a

legislature, or a judge. Every executive head who advises violent,

instead of gradual, action, or who advocates ill-considered and

sweeping measures of reform (especially if they are tainted with

vindictiveness and disregard for the rights of the minority) is

particularly blameworthy. The several legislatures are responsible for

the fact that our laws are often prepared with slovenly haste and lack

of consideration. Moreover, they are often prepared, and still more

frequently amended during passage, at the suggestion of the very

parties against whom they are afterwards enforced. Our great clusters

of corporations, huge trusts and fabulously wealthy multi-millionaires,

employ the very best lawyers they can obtain to pick flaws in these

statutes after their passage; but they also employ a class of secret

agents who seek, under the advice of experts, to render hostile

legislation innocuous by making it unconstitutional, often through the

insertion of what appear on their face to be drastic and sweeping

provisions against the interests of the parties inspiring them; while

the demagogues, the corrupt creatures who introduce blackmailing

schemes to "strike" corporations, and all who demand extreme, and

undesirably radical, measures, show themselves to be the worst enemies

of the very public whose loud-mouthed champions they profess to be. A

very striking illustration of the consequences of carelessness in the

preparation of a statute was the employers' liability law of 1906. In

the cases arising under that law, four out of six courts of first

instance held it unconstitutional; six out of nine justices of the

Supreme Court held that its subject-matter was within the province of

congressional action; and four of the nine justices held it valid. It

was, however, adjudged unconstitutional by a bare majority of the

court--five to four. It was surely a very slovenly piece of work to

frame the legislation in such shape as to leave the question open at

all.

Real damage has been done by the manifold and conflicting

interpretations of the interstate commerce law. Control over the great

corporations doing interstate business can be effective only if it is

vested with full power in an administrative department, a branch of the

Federal executive, carrying out a Federal law; it can never be

effective if a divided responsibility is left in both the States and

the Nation; it can never be effective if left in the hands of the

courts to be decided by lawsuits.

The courts hold a place of peculiar and deserved sanctity under our

form of government. Respect for the law is essential to the permanence

of our institutions; and respect for the law is largely conditioned

upon respect for the courts. It is an offense against the Republic to

say anything which can weaken this respect, save for the gravest reason

and in the most carefully guarded manner. Our judges should be held in

peculiar honor; and the duty of respectful and truthful comment and

criticism, which should be binding when we speak of anybody, should be

especially binding when we speak of them. On an average they stand

above any other servants of the community, and the greatest judges have

reached the high level held by those few greatest patriots whom the

whole country delights to honor. But we must face the fact that there

are wise and unwise judges, just as there are wise and unwise

executives and legislators. When a president or a governor behaves

improperly or unwisely, the remedy is easy, for his term is short; the

same is true with the legislator, although not to the same degree, for

he is one of many who belong to some given legislative body, and it is

therefore less easy to fix his personal responsibility and hold him

accountable therefor. With a judge, who, being human, is also likely to

err, but whose tenure is for life, there is no similar way of holding

him to responsibility. Under ordinary conditions the only forms of

pressure to which he is in any way amenable are public opinion and the

action of his fellow judges. It is the last which is most immediately

effective, and to which we should look for the reform of abuses. Any

remedy applied from without is fraught with risk. It is far better,

from every standpoint, that the remedy should come from within. In no

other nation in the world do the courts wield such vast and

far-reaching power as in the United States. All that is necessary is

that the courts as a whole should exercise this power with the

farsighted wisdom already shown by those judges who scan the future

while they act in the present. Let them exercise this great power not

only honestly and bravely, but with wise insight into the needs and

fixed purposes of the people, so that they may do justice and work

equity, so that they may protect all persons in their rights, and yet

break down the barriers of privilege, which is the foe of right.

FORESTS.

If there is any one duty which more than another we owe it to our

children and our children's children to perform at once, it is to save

the forests of this country, for they constitute the first and most

important element in the conservation of the natural resources of the

country. There are of course two kinds of natural resources, One is the

kind which can only be used as part of a process of exhaustion; this is

true of mines, natural oil and gas wells, and the like. The other, and

of course ultimately by far the most important, includes the resources

which can be improved in the process of wise use; the soil, the rivers,

and the forests come under this head. Any really civilized nation will

so use all of these three great national assets that the nation will

have their benefit in the future. Just as a farmer, after all his life

making his living from his farm, will, if he is an expert farmer, leave

it as an asset of increased value to his son, so we should leave our

national domain to our children, increased in value and not worn out.

There are small sections of our own country, in the East and the West,

in the Adriondacks, the White Mountains, and the Appalachians, and in

the Rocky Mountains, where we can already see for ourselves the damage

in the shape of permanent injury to the soil and the river systems

which comes from reckless deforestation. It matters not whether this

deforestation is due to the actual reckless cutting of timber, to the

fires that inevitably follow such reckless cutting of timber, or to

reckless and uncontrolled grazing, especially by the great migratory

bands of sheep, the unchecked wandering of which over the country means

destruction to forests and disaster to the small home makers, the

settlers of limited means.

Shortsighted persons, or persons blinded to the future by desire to

make money in every way out of the present, sometimes speak as if no

great damage would be done by the reckless destruction of our forests.

It is difficult to have patience with the arguments of these persons.

Thanks to our own recklessness in the use of our splendid forests, we

have already crossed the verge of a timber famine in this country, and

no measures that we now take can, at least for many years, undo the

mischief that has already been done. But we can prevent further

mischief being done; and it would be in the highest degree

reprehensible to let any consideration of temporary convenience or

temporary cost interfere with such action, especially as regards the

National Forests which the nation can now, at this very moment,

control.

All serious students of the question are aware of the great damage that

has been done in the Mediterranean countries of Europe, Asia, and

Africa by deforestation. The similar damage that has been done in

Eastern Asia is less well known. A recent investigation into conditions

in North China by Mr. Frank N. Meyer, of the Bureau of Plant Industry

of the United States Department of Agriculture, has incidentally

furnished in very striking fashion proof of the ruin that comes from

reckless deforestation of mountains, and of the further fact that the

damage once done may prove practically irreparable. So important are

these investigations that I herewith attach as an appendix to my

message certain photographs showing present conditions in China. They

show in vivid fashion the appalling desolation, taking the shape of

barren mountains and gravel and sand-covered plains, which immediately

follows and depends upon the deforestation of the mountains. Not many

centuries ago the country of northern China was one of the most fertile

and beautiful spots in the entire world, and was heavily forested. We

know this not only from the old Chinese records, but from the accounts

given by the traveler, Marco Polo. He, for instance, mentions that in

visiting the provinces of Shansi and Shensi he observed many

plantations of mulberry trees. Now there is hardly a single mulberry

tree in either of these provinces, and the culture of the silkworm has

moved farther south, to regions of atmospheric moisture. As an

illustration of the complete change in the rivers, we may take Polo's

statement that a certain river, the Hun Ho, was so large and deep that

merchants ascended it from the sea with heavily laden boats; today this

river is simply a broad sandy bed, with shallow, rapid currents

wandering hither and thither across it, absolutely unnavigable. But we

do not have to depend upon written records. The dry wells, and the

wells with water far below the former watermark, bear testimony to the

good days of the past and the evil days of the present. Wherever the

native vegetation has been allowed to remain, as, for instance, here

and there around a sacred temple or imperial burying ground, there are

still huge trees and tangled jungle, fragments of the glorious ancient

forests. The thick, matted forest growth formerly covered the mountains

to their summits. All natural factors favored this dense forest growth,

and as long as it was permitted to exist the plains at the foot of the

mountains were among the most fertile on the globe, and the whole

country was a garden. Not the slightest effort was made, however, to

prevent the unchecked cutting of the trees, or to secure reforestation.

Doubtless for many centuries the tree-cutting by the inhabitants of the

mountains worked but slowly in bringing about the changes that have now

come to pass; doubtless for generations the inroads were scarcely

noticeable. But there came a time when the forest had shrunk

sufficiently to make each year's cutting a serious matter, and from

that time on the destruction proceeded with appalling rapidity; for of

course each year of destruction rendered the forest less able to

recuperate, less able to resist next year's inroad. Mr. Meyer describes

the ceaseless progress of the destruction even now, when there is so

little left to destroy. Every morning men and boys go out armed with

mattox or axe, scale the steepest mountain sides, and cut down and grub

out, root and branch, the small trees and shrubs still to be found. The

big trees disappeared centuries ago, so that now one of these is never

seen save in the neighborhood of temples, where they are artificially

protected; and even here it takes all the watch and care of the

tree-loving priests to prevent their destruction. Each family, each

community, where there is no common care exercised in the interest of

all of them to prevent deforestation, finds its profit in the immediate

use of the fuel which would otherwise be used by some other family or

some other community. In the total absence of regulation of the matter

in the interest of the whole people, each small group is inevitably

pushed into a policy of destruction which can not afford to take

thought for the morrow. This is just one of those matters which it is

fatal to leave to unsupervised individual control. The forest can only

be protected by the State, by the Nation; and the liberty of action of

individuals must be conditioned upon what the State or Nation

determines to be necessary for the common safety.

The lesson of deforestation in China is a lesson which mankind should

have learned many times already from what has occurred in other places.

Denudation leaves naked soil; then gullying cuts down to the bare rock;

and meanwhile the rock-waste buries the bottomlands. When the soil is

gone, men must go; and the process does not take long.

This ruthless destruction of the forests in northern China has brought

about, or has aided in bringing about, desolation, just as the

destruction of the forests in central Asia aid in bringing ruin to the

once rich central Asian cities; just as the destruction of the forest

in northern Africa helped towards the ruin of a region that was a

fertile granary in Roman days. Shortsighted man, whether barbaric,

semi-civilized, or what he mistakenly regards as fully civilized, when

he has destroyed the forests, has rendered certain the ultimate

destruction of the land itself. In northern China the mountains are now

such as are shown by the accompanying photographs, absolutely barren

peaks. Not only have the forests been destroyed, but because of their

destruction the soil has been washed off the naked rock. The terrible

consequence is that it is impossible now to undo the damage that has

been done. Many centuries would have to pass before soil would again

collect, or could be made to collect, in sufficient quantity once more

to support the old-time forest growth. In consequence the Mongol Desert

is practically extending eastward over northern China. The climate has

changed and is still changing. It has changed even within the last half

century, as the work of tree destruction has been consummated. The

great masses of arboreal vegetation on the mountains formerly absorbed

the heat of the sun and sent up currents of cool air which brought the

moisture-laden clouds lower and forced them to precipitate in rain a

part of their burden of water. Now that there is no vegetation, the

barren mountains, scorched by the sun, send up currents of heated air

which drive away instead of attracting the rain clouds, and cause their

moisture to be disseminated. In consequence, instead of the regular and

plentiful rains which existed in these regions of China when the

forests were still in evidence, the unfortunate inhabitants of the

deforested lands now see their crops wither for lack of rainfall, while

the seasons grow more and more irregular; and as the air becomes dryer

certain crops refuse longer to grow at all. That everything dries out

faster than formerly is shown by the fact that the level of the wells

all over the land has sunk perceptibly, many of them having become

totally dry. In addition to the resulting agricultural distress, the

watercourses have changed. Formerly they were narrow and deep, with an

abundance of clear water the year around; for the roots and humus of

the forests caught the rainwater and let it escape by slow, regular

seepage. They have now become broad, shallow stream beds, in which

muddy water trickles in slender currents during the dry seasons, while

when it rains there are freshets, and roaring muddy torrents come

tearing down, bringing disaster and destruction everywhere. Moreover,

these floods and freshets, which diversify the general dryness, wash

away from the mountain sides, and either wash away or cover in the

valleys, the rich fertile soil which it took tens of thousands of years

for Nature to form; and it is lost forever, and until the forests grow

again it can not be replaced. The sand and stones from the mountain

sides are washed loose and come rolling down to cover the arable lands,

and in consequence, throughout this part of China, many formerly rich

districts are now sandy wastes, useless for human cultivation and even

for pasture. The cities have been of course seriously affected, for the

streams have gradually ceased to be navigable. There is testimony that

even within the memory of men now living there has been a serious

diminution of the rainfall of northeastern China. The level of the

Sungari River in northern Manchuria has been sensibly lowered during

the last fifty years, at least partly as the result of the

indiscriminate rutting of the forests forming its watershed. Almost all

the rivers of northern China have become uncontrollable, and very

dangerous to the dwellers along their banks, as a direct result of the

destruction of the forests. The journey from Pekin to Jehol shows in

melancholy fashion how the soil has been washed away from whole

valleys, so that they have been converted into deserts.

In northern China this disastrous process has gone on so long and has

proceeded so far that no complete remedy could be applied. There are

certain mountains in China from which the soil is gone so utterly that

only the slow action of the ages could again restore it; although of

course much could be done to prevent the still further eastward

extension of the Mongolian Desert if the Chinese Government would act

at once. The accompanying cuts from photographs show the inconceivable

desolation of the barren mountains in which certain of these rivers

rise--mountains, be it remembered, which formerly supported dense

forests of larches and firs, now unable to produce any wood, and

because of their condition a source of danger to the whole country. The

photographs also show the same rivers after they have passed through

the mountains, the beds having become broad and sandy because of the

deforestation of the mountains. One of the photographs shows a caravan

passing through a valley. Formerly, when the mountains were forested,

it was thickly peopled by prosperous peasants. Now the floods have

carried destruction all over the land and the valley is a stony desert.

Another photograph shows a mountain road covered with the stones and

rocks that are brought down in the rainy season from the mountains

which have already been deforested by human hands. Another shows a

pebbly river-bed in southern Manchuria where what was once a great

stream has dried up owing to the deforestation in the mountains. Only

some scrub wood is left, which will disappear within a half century.

Yet another shows the effect of one of the washouts, destroying an

arable mountain side, these washouts being due to the removal of all

vegetation; yet in this photograph the foreground shows that

reforestation is still a possibility in places.

What has thus happened in northern China, what has happened in Central

Asia, in Palestine, in North Africa, in parts of the Mediterranean

countries of Europe, will surely happen in our country if we do not

exercise that wise forethought which should be one of the chief marks

of any people calling itself civilized. Nothing should be permitted to

stand in the way of the preservation of the forests, and it is criminal

to permit individuals to purchase a little gain for themselves through

the destruction of forests when this destruction is fatal to the

well-being of the whole country in the future.

INLAND WATERWAYS.

Action should be begun forthwith, during the present session of the

Congress, for the improvement of our inland waterways--action which

will result in giving us not only navigable but navigated rivers. We

have spent hundreds of millions of dollars upon these waterways, yet

the traffic on nearly all of them is steadily declining. This condition

is the direct result of the absence of any comprehensive and far-seeing

plan of waterway improvement, Obviously we can not continue thus to

expend the revenues of the Government without return. It is poor

business to spend money for inland navigation unless we get it.

Inquiry into the condition of the Mississippi and its principal

tributaries reveals very many instances of the utter waste caused by

the methods which have hitherto obtained for the so-called

"improvement" of navigation. A striking instance is supplied by the

"improvement" of the Ohio, which, begun in 1824, was continued under a

single plan for half a century. In 1875 a new plan was adopted and

followed for a quarter of a century. In 1902 still a different plan was

adopted and has since been pursued at a rate which only promises a

navigable river in from twenty to one hundred years longer.

Such shortsighted, vacillating, and futile methods are accompanied by

decreasing water-borne commerce and increasing traffic congestion on

land, by increasing floods, and by the waste of public money. The

remedy lies in abandoning the methods which have so signally failed and

adopting new ones in keeping with the needs and demands of our people.

In a report on a measure introduced at the first session of the present

Congress, the Secretary of War said: "The chief defect in the methods

hitherto pursued lies in the absence of executive authority for

originating comprehensive plans covering the country or natural

divisions thereof." In this opinion I heartily concur. The present

methods not only fail to give us inland navigation, but they are

injurious to the army as well. What is virtually a permanent detail of

the corps of engineers to civilian duty necessarily impairs the

efficiency of our military establishment. The military engineers have

undoubtedly done efficient work in actual construction, but they are

necessarily unsuited by their training and traditions to take the broad

view, and to gather and transmit to the Congress the commercial and

industrial information and forecasts, upon which waterway improvement

must always so largely rest. Furthermore, they have failed to grasp the

great underlying fact that every stream is a unit from its source to

its mouth, and that all its uses are interdependent. Prominent officers

of the Engineer Corps have recently even gone so far as to assert in

print that waterways are not dependent upon the conservation of the

forests about their headwaters. This position is opposed to all the

recent work of the scientific bureaus of the Government and to the

general experience of mankind. A physician who disbelieved in

vaccination would not be the right man to handle an epidemic of

smallpox, nor should we leave a doctor skeptical about the transmission

of yellow fever by the Stegomyia mosquito in charge of sanitation at

Havana or Panama. So with the improvement of our rivers; it is no

longer wise or safe to leave this great work in the hands of men who

fail to grasp the essential relations between navigation and general

development and to assimilate and use the central facts about our

streams.

Until the work of river improvement is undertaken in a modern way it

can not have results that will meet the needs of this modern nation.

These needs should be met without further dilly-dallying or delay. The

plan which promises the best and quickest results is that of a

permanent commission authorized to coordinate the work of all the

Government departments relating to waterways, and to frame and

supervise the execution of a comprehensive plan. Under such a

commission the actual work of construction might be entrusted to the

reclamation service; or to the military engineers acting with a

sufficient number of civilians to continue the work in time of war; or

it might be divided between the reclamation service and the corps of

engineers. Funds should be provided from current revenues if it is

deemed wise--otherwise from the sale of bonds. The essential thing is

that the work should go forward under the best possible plan, and with

the least possible delay. We should have a new type of work and a new

organization for planning and directing it. The time for playing with

our waterways is past. The country demands results.

NATIONAL PARKS.

I urge that all our National parks adjacent to National forests be

placed completely under the control of the forest service of the

Agricultural Department, instead of leaving them as they now are, under

the Interior Department and policed by the army. The Congress should

provide for superintendents with adequate corps of first-class civilian

scouts, or rangers, and, further, place the road construction under the

superintendent instead of leaving it with the War Department. Such a

change in park management would result in economy and avoid the

difficulties of administration which now arise from having the

responsibility of care and protection divided between different

departments. The need for this course is peculiarly great in the

Yellowstone Park. This, like the Yosemite, is a great wonderland, and

should be kept as a national playground. In both, all wild things

should be protected and the scenery kept wholly unmarred.

I am happy to say that I have been able to set aside in various parts

of the country small, well-chosen tracts of ground to serve as

sanctuaries and nurseries for wild creatures.

DENATURED ALCOHOL.

I had occasion in my message of May 4, 1906, to urge the passage of

some law putting alcohol, used in the arts, industries, and

manufactures, upon the free list--that is, to provide for the

withdrawal free of tax of alcohol which is to be denatured for those

purposes. The law of June 7, 1906, and its amendment of March 2, 1907,

accomplished what was desired in that respect, and the use of denatured

alcohol, as intended, is making a fair degree of progress and is

entitled to further encouragement and support from the Congress.

PURE FOOD.

The pure food legislation has already worked a benefit difficult to

overestimate.

INDIAN SERVICE.

It has been my purpose from the beginning of my administration to take

the Indian Service completely out of the atmosphere of political

activity, and there has been steady progress toward that end. The last

remaining stronghold of politics in that service was the agency system,

which had seen its best days and was gradually falling to pieces from

natural or purely evolutionary causes, but, like all such survivals,

was decaying slowly in its later stages. It seems clear that its

extinction had better be made final now, so that the ground can be

cleared for larger constructive work on behalf of the Indians,

preparatory to their induction into the full measure of responsible

citizenship. On November 1 only eighteen agencies were left on the

roster; with two exceptions, where some legal questions seemed to stand

temporarily in the way, these have been changed to superintendencies,

and their heads brought into the classified civil service.

SECRET SERVICE.

Last year an amendment was incorporated in the measure providing for

the Secret Service, which provided that there should be no detail from

the Secret Service and no transfer therefrom. It is not too much to say

that this amendment has been of benefit only, and could be of benefit

only, to the criminal classes. If deliberately introduced for the

purpose of diminishing the effectiveness of war against crime it could

not have been better devised to this end. It forbade the practices that

had been followed to a greater or less extent by the executive heads of

various departments for twenty years. To these practices we owe the

securing of the evidence which enabled us to drive great lotteries out

of business and secure a quarter of a million of dollars in fines from

their promoters. These practices have enabled us to get some of the

evidence indispensable in order in connection with the theft of

government land and government timber by great corporations and by

individuals. These practices have enabled us to get some of the

evidence indispensable in order to secure the conviction of the

wealthiest and most formidable criminals with whom the Government has

to deal, both those operating in violation of the anti-trust law and

others. The amendment in question was of benefit to no one excepting to

these criminals, and it seriously hampers the Government in the

detection of crime and the securing of justice. Moreover, it not only

affects departments outside of the Treasury, but it tends to hamper the

Secretary of the Treasury himself in the effort to utilize the

employees of his department so as to best meet the requirements of the

public service. It forbids him from preventing frauds upon the customs

service, from investigating irregularities in branch mints and assay

offices, and has seriously crippled him. It prevents the promotion of

employees in the Secret Service, and this further discourages good

effort. In its present form the restriction operates only to the

advantage of the criminal, of the wrongdoer. The chief argument in

favor of the provision was that the Congressmen did not themselves wish

to be investigated by Secret Service men. Very little of such

investigation has been done in the past; but it is true that the work

of the Secret Service agents was partly responsible for the indictment

and conviction of a Senator and a Congressman for land frauds in

Oregon. I do not believe that it is in the public interest to protect

criminally in any branch of the public service, and exactly as we have

again and again during the past seven years prosecuted and convicted

such criminals who were in the executive branch of the Government, so

in my belief we should be given ample means to prosecute them if found

in the legislative branch. But if this is not considered desirable a

special exception could be made in the law prohibiting the use of the

Secret Service force in investigating members of the Congress. It would

be far better to do this than to do what actually was done, and strive

to prevent or at least to hamper effective action against criminals by

the executive branch of the Government.

POSTAL SAVINGS BANKS.

I again renew my recommendation for postal savings hanks, for

depositing savings with the security of the Government behind them. The

object is to encourage thrift and economy in the wage-earner and person

of moderate means. In 14 States the deposits in savings banks as

reported to the Comptroller of the Currency amount to $3,590,245,402,

or 98.4 per cent of the entire deposits, while in the remaining 32

States there are only $70,308,543, or 1.6 per cent, showing

conclusively that there are many localities in the United States where

sufficient opportunity is not given to the people to deposit their

savings. The result is that money is kept in hiding and unemployed. It

is believed that in the aggregate vast sums of money would be brought

into circulation through the instrumentality of the postal savings

banks. While there are only 1,453 savings banks reporting to the

Comptroller there are more than 61,000 post-offices, 40,000 of which

are money order offices. Postal savings banks are now in operation in

practically all of the great civilized countries with the exception of

the United States.

PARCEL POST.

In my last annual message I commended the Postmaster-General's

recommendation for an extension of the parcel post on the rural routes.

The establishment of a local parcel post on rural routes would be to

the mutual benefit of the farmer and the country storekeeper, and it is

desirable that the routes, serving more than 15,000,000 people, should

be utilized to the fullest practicable extent. An amendment was

proposed in the Senate at the last session, at the suggestion of the

Postmaster-General, providing that, for the purpose of ascertaining the

practicability of establishing a special local parcel post system on

the rural routes throughout the United States, the Postmaster-General

be authorized and directed to experiment and report to the Congress the

result of such experiment by establishing a special local parcel post

system on rural delivery routes in not to exceed four counties in the

United States for packages of fourth-class matter originating on a

rural route or at the distributing post office for delivery by rural

carriers. It would seem only proper that such an experiment should be

tried in order to demonstrate the practicability of the proposition,

especially as the Postmaster-General estimates that the revenue derived

from the operation of such a system on all the rural routes would

amount to many million dollars.

EDUCATION.

The share that the National Government should take in the broad work of

education has not received the attention and the care it rightly

deserves. The immediate responsibility for the support and improvement

of our educational systems and institutions rests and should always

rest with the people of the several States acting through their state

and local governments, but the Nation has an opportunity in educational

work which must not be lost and a duty which should no longer be

neglected.

The National Bureau of Education was established more than forty years

ago. Its purpose is to collect and diffuse such information "as shall

aid the people of the United States in the establishment and

maintenance of efficient school systems and otherwise promote the cause

of education throughout the country." This purpose in no way conflicts

with the educational work of the States, but may be made of great

advantage to the States by giving them the fullest, most accurate, and

hence the most helpful information and suggestion regarding the best

educational systems. The Nation, through its broader field of

activities, its wider opportunity for obtaining information from all

the States and from foreign countries, is able to do that which not

even the richest States can do, and with the distinct additional

advantage that the information thus obtained is used for the immediate

benefit of all our people.

With the limited means hitherto provided, the Bureau of Education has

rendered efficient service, but the Congress has neglected to

adequately supply the bureau with means to meet the educational growth

of the country. The appropriations for the general work of the bureau,

outside education in Alaska, for the year 1909 are but $87,500--an

amount less than they were ten years ago, and some of the important

items in these appropriations are less than they were thirty years ago.

It is an inexcusable waste of public money to appropriate an amount

which is so inadequate as to make it impossible properly to do the work

authorized, and it is unfair to the great educational interests of the

country to deprive them of the value of the results which can be

obtained by proper appropriations.

I earnestly recommend that this unfortunate state of affairs as regards

the national educational office be remedied by adequate appropriations.

This recommendation is urged by the representatives of our common

schools and great state universities and the leading educators, who all

unite in requesting favorable consideration and action by the Congress

upon this subject.

CENSUS.

I strongly urge that the request of the Director of the Census in

connection with the decennial work so soon to be begun be complied with

and that the appointments to the census force be placed under the civil

service law, waiving the geographical requirements as requested by the

Director of the Census. The supervisors and enumerators should not be

appointed under the civil service law, for the reasons given by the

Director. I commend to the Congress the careful consideration of the

admirable report of the Director of the Census, and I trust that his

recommendations will be adopted and immediate action thereon taken.

PUBLIC HEALTH.

It is highly advisable that there should be intelligent action on the

part of the Nation on the question of preserving the health of the

country. Through the practical extermination in San Francisco of

disease-bearing rodents our country has thus far escaped the bubonic

plague. This is but one of the many achievements of American health

officers; and it shows what can be accomplished with a better

organization than at present exists. The dangers to public health from

food adulteration and from many other sources, such as the menace to

the physical, mental and moral development of children from child

labor, should be met and overcome. There are numerous diseases, which

are now known to be preventable, which are, nevertheless, not

prevented. The recent International Congress on Tuberculosis has made

us painfully aware of the inadequacy of American public health

legislation. This Nation can not afford to lag behind in the world-wide

battle now being waged by all civilized people with the microscopic

foes of mankind, nor ought we longer to ignore the reproach that this

Government takes more pains to protect the lives of hogs and of cattle

than of human beings.

REDISTRIBUTION OF BUREAUS.

The first legislative step to be taken is that for the concentration of

the proper bureaus into one of the existing departments. I therefore

urgently recommend the passage of a bill which shall authorize a

redistribution of the bureaus which shall best accomplish this end.

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

I recommend that legislation be enacted placing under the jurisdiction

of the Department of Commerce and Labor the Government Printing Office.

At present this office is under the combined control, supervision, and

administrative direction of the President and of the Joint Committee on

Printing of the two Houses of the Congress. The advantage of having the

4,069 employees in this office and the expenditure of the $5,761,377.57

appropriated therefor supervised by an executive department is obvious,

instead of the present combined supervision.

SOLDIERS' HOMES.

All Soldiers' Homes should be placed under the complete jurisdiction

and control of the War Department.

INDEPENDENT BUREAUS AND COMMISSIONS.

Economy and sound business policy require that all existing independent

bureaus and commissions should be placed under the jurisdiction of

appropriate executive departments. It is unwise from every standpoint,

and results only in mischief, to have any executive work done save by

the purely executive bodies, under the control of the President; and

each such executive body should be under the immediate supervision of a

Cabinet Minister.

STATEHOOD.

I advocate the immediate admission of New Mexico and Arizona as States.

This should be done at the present session of the Congress. The people

of the two Territories have made it evident by their votes that they

will not come in as one State. The only alternative is to admit them as

two, and I trust that this will be done without delay.

INTERSTATE FISHERIES.

I call the attention of the Congress to the importance of the problem

of the fisheries in the interstate waters. On the Great Lakes we are

now, under the very wise treaty of April 11th of this year, endeavoring

to come to an international agreement for the preservation and

satisfactory use of the fisheries of these waters which can not

otherwise be achieved. Lake Erie, for example, has the richest fresh

water fisheries in the world; but it is now controlled by the statutes

of two Nations, four States, and one Province, and in this Province by

different ordinances in different counties. All these political

divisions work at cross purposes, and in no case can they achieve

protection to the fisheries, on the one hand, and justice to the

localities and individuals on the other. The case is similar in Puget

Sound.

But the problem is quite as pressing in the interstate waters of the

United States. The salmon fisheries of the Columbia River are now but a

fraction of what they were twenty-five years ago, and what they would

be now if the United States Government had taken complete charge of

them by intervening between Oregon and Washington. During these

twenty-five years the fishermen of each State have naturally tried to

take all they could get, and the two legislatures have never been able

to agree on joint action of any kind adequate in degree for the

protection of the fisheries. At the moment the fishing on the Oregon

side is practically closed, while there is no limit on the Washington

side of any kind, and no one can tell what the courts will decide as to

the very statutes under which this action and non-action result.

Meanwhile very few salmon reach the spawning grounds, and probably four

years hence the fisheries will amount to nothing; and this comes from a

struggle between the associated, or gill-net, fishermen on the one

hand, and the owners of the fishing wheels up the river. The fisheries

of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Potomac are also in a bad way.

For this there is no remedy except for the United States to control and

legislate for the interstate fisheries as part of the business of

interstate commerce. In this case the machinery for scientific

investigation and for control already exists in the United States

Bureau of Fisheries. In this as in similar problems the obvious and

simple rule should be followed of having those matters which no

particular State can manage taken in hand by the United States;

problems which in the seesaw of conflicting State legislatures are

absolutely unsolvable are easy enough for Congress to control.

FISHERIES AND FUR SEALS.

The federal statute regulating interstate traffic in game should be

extended to include fish. New federal fish hatcheries should be

established. The administration of the Alaskan fur-seal service should

be vested in the Bureau of Fisheries.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

This Nation's foreign policy is based on the theory that right must be

done between nations precisely as between individuals, and in our

actions for the last ten years we have in this matter proven our faith

by our deeds. We have behaved, and are behaving, towards other nations

as in private life an honorable man would behave towards his fellows.

LATIN-AMERICAN REPUBLICS.

The commercial and material progress of the twenty Latin-American

Republics is worthy of the careful attention of the Congress. No other

section of the world has shown a greater proportionate development of

its foreign trade during the last ten years and none other has more

special claims on the interest of the United States. It offers to-day

probably larger opportunities for the legitimate expansion of our

commerce than any other group of countries. These countries will want

our products in greatly increased quantities, and we shall

correspondingly need theirs. The International Bureau of the American

Republics is doing a useful work in making these nations and their

resources better known to us, and in acquainting them not only with us

as a people and with our purposes towards them, but with what we have

to exchange for their goods. It is an international institution

supported by all the governments of the two Americas.

PANAMA CANAL.

The work on the Panama Canal is being done with a speed, efficiency and

entire devotion to duty which make it a model for all work of the kind.

No task of such magnitude has ever before been undertaken by any

nation; and no task of the kind has ever been better performed. The men

on the isthmus, from Colonel Goethals and his fellow commissioners

through the entire list of employees who are faithfully doing their

duty, have won their right to the ungrudging respect and gratitude of

the American people.

OCEAN MAIL LINERS.

I again recommend the extension of the ocean mail act of 1891 so that

satisfactory American ocean mail lines to South America, Asia, the

Philippines, and Australasia may be established. The creation of such

steamship lines should be the natural corollary of the voyage of the

battle fleet. It should precede the opening of the Panama Canal. Even

under favorable conditions several years must elapse before such lines

can be put into operation. Accordingly I urge that the Congress act

promptly where foresight already shows that action sooner or later will

be inevitable.

HAWAII.

I call particular attention to the Territory of Hawaii. The importance

of those islands is apparent, and the need of improving their condition

and developing their resources is urgent. In recent years industrial

conditions upon the islands have radically changed, The importation of

coolie labor has practically ceased, and there is now developing such a

diversity in agricultural products as to make possible a change in the

land conditions of the Territory, so that an opportunity may be given

to the small land owner similar to that on the mainland. To aid these

changes, the National Government must provide the necessary harbor

improvements on each island, so that the agricultural products can be

carried to the markets of the world. The coastwise shipping laws should

be amended to meet the special needs of the islands, and the alien

contract labor law should be so modified in its application to Hawaii

as to enable American and European labor to be brought thither.

We have begun to improve Pearl Harbor for a naval base and to provide

the necessary military fortifications for the protection of the

islands, but I can not too strongly emphasize the need of

appropriations for these purposes of such an amount as will within the

shortest possible time make those islands practically impregnable. It

is useless to develop the industrial conditions of the islands and

establish there bases of supply for our naval and merchant fleets

unless we insure, as far as human ingenuity can, their safety from

foreign seizure.

One thing to be remembered with all our fortifications is that it is

almost useless to make them impregnable from the sea if they are left

open to land attack. This is true even of our own coast, but it is

doubly true of our insular possessions. In Hawaii, for instance, it is

worse than useless to establish a naval station unless we establish it

behind fortifications so strong that no landing force can take them

save by regular and long-continued siege operations.

THE PHILIPPINES.

Real progress toward self-government is being made in the Philippine

Islands. The gathering of a Philippine legislative body and Philippine

assembly marks a process absolutely new in Asia, not only as regards

Asiatic colonies of European powers but as regards Asiatic possessions

of other Asiatic powers; and, indeed, always excepting the striking and

wonderful example afforded by the great Empire of Japan, it opens an

entirely new departure when compared with anything which has happened

among Asiatic powers which are their own masters. Hitherto this

Philippine legislature has acted with moderation and self-restraint,

and has seemed in practical fashion to realize the eternal truth that

there must always be government, and that the only way in which any

body of individuals can escape the necessity of being governed by

outsiders is to show that they are able to restrain themselves, to keep

down wrongdoing and disorder. The Filipino people, through their

officials, are therefore making real steps in the direction of

self-government. I hope and believe that these steps mark the beginning

of a course which will continue till the Filipinos become fit to decide

for themselves whether they desire to be an independent nation. But it

is well for them (and well also for those Americans who during the past

decade have done so much damage to the Filipinos by agitation for an

immediate independence for which they were totally unfit) to remember

that self-government depends, and must depend, upon the Filipinos

themselves. All we can do is to give them the opportunity to develop

the capacity for self-government. If we had followed the advice of the

foolish doctrinaires who wished us at any time during the last ten

years to turn the Filipino people adrift, we should have shirked the

plainest possible duty and have inflicted a lasting wrong upon the

Filipino people. We have acted in exactly the opposite spirit. We have

given the Filipinos constitutional government--a government based upon

justice--and we have shown that we have governed them for their good

and not for our aggrandizement. At the present time, as during the past

ten years, the inexorable logic of facts shows that this government

must be supplied by us and not by them. We must be wise and generous;

we must help the Filipinos to master the difficult art of self-control,

which is simply another name for self-government. But we can not give

them self-government save in the sense of governing them so that

gradually they may, if they are able, learn to govern themselves. Under

the present system of just laws and sympathetic administration, we have

every reason to believe that they are gradually acquiring the character

which lies at the basis of self-government, and for which, if it be

lacking, no system of laws, no paper constitution, will in any wise

serve as a substitute. Our people in the Philippines have achieved what

may legitimately be called a marvelous success in giving to them a

government which marks on the part of those in authority both the

necessary understanding of the people and the necessary purpose to

serve them disinterestedly and in good faith. I trust that within a

generation the time will arrive when the Philippines can decide for

themselves whether it is well for them to become independent, or to

continue under the protection of a strong and disinterested power, able

to guarantee to the islands order at home and protection from foreign

invasion. But no one can prophesy the exact date when it will be wise

to consider independence as a fixed and definite policy. It would be

worse than folly to try to set down such a date in advance, for it must

depend upon the way in which the Philippine people themselves develop

the power of self-mastery.

PORTO RICO.

I again recommend that American citizenship be conferred upon the

people of Porto Rico.

CUBA.

In Cuba our occupancy will cease in about two months' time, the Cubans

have in orderly manner elected their own governmental authorities, and

the island will be turned over to them. Our occupation on this occasion

has lasted a little over two years, and Cuba has thriven and prospered

under it. Our earnest hope and one desire is that the people of the

island shall now govern themselves with justice, so that peace and

order may be secure. We will gladly help them to this end; but I would

solemnly warn them to remember the great truth that the only way a

people can permanently avoid being governed from without is to show

that they both can and will govern themselves from within.

JAPANESE EXPOSITION.

The Japanese Government has postponed until 1917 the date of the great

international exposition, the action being taken so as to insure ample

time in which to prepare to make the exposition all that it should be

made. The American commissioners have visited Japan and the

postponement will merely give ampler opportunity for America to be

represented at the exposition. Not since the first international

exposition has there been one of greater importance than this will be,

marking as it does the fiftieth anniversary of the ascension to the

throne of the Emperor of Japan. The extraordinary leap to a foremost

place among the nations of the world made by Japan during this half

century is something unparalleled in all previous history. This

exposition will fitly commemorate and signalize the giant progress that

has been achieved. It is the first exposition of its kind that has ever

been held in Asia. The United States, because of the ancient friendship

between the two peoples, because each of us fronts on the Pacific, and

because of the growing commercial relations between this country and

Asia, takes a peculiar interest in seeing the exposition made a success

in every way.

I take this opportunity publicly to state my appreciation of the way in

which in Japan, in Australia, in New Zealand, and in all the States of

South America, the battle fleet has been received on its practice

voyage around the world. The American Government can not too strongly

express its appreciation of the abounding and generous hospitality

shown our ships in every port they visited.

THE ARMY.

As regards the Army I call attention to the fact that while our junior

officers and enlisted men stand very high, the present system of

promotion by seniority results in bringing into the higher grades many

men of mediocre capacity who have but a short time to serve. No man

should regard it as his vested right to rise to the highest rank in the

Army any more than in any other profession. It is a curious and by no

means creditable fact that there should be so often a failure on the

part of the public and its representatives to understand the great

need, from the standpoint of the service and the Nation, of refusing to

promote respectable, elderly incompetents. The higher places should be

given to the most deserving men without regard to seniority; at least

seniority should be treated as only one consideration. In the stress of

modern industrial competition no business firm could succeed if those

responsible for its management were chosen simply on the ground that

they were the oldest people in its employment; yet this is the course

advocated as regards the Army, and required by law for all grades

except those of general officer. As a matter of fact, all of the best

officers in the highest ranks of the Army are those who have attained

their present position wholly or in part by a process of selection.

The scope of retiring boards should be extended so that they could

consider general unfitness to command for any cause, in order to secure

a far more rigid enforcement than at present in the elimination of

officers for mental, physical or temperamental disabilities. But this

plan is recommended only if the Congress does not see fit to provide

what in my judgment is far better; that is, for selection in promotion,

and for elimination for age. Officers who fail to attain a certain rank

by a certain age should be retired--for instance, if a man should not

attain field rank by the time he is 45 he should of course be placed on

the retired list. General officers should be selected as at present,

and one-third of the other promotions should be made by selection, the

selection to be made by the President or the Secretary of War from a

list of at least two candidates proposed for each vacancy by a board of

officers from the arm of the service from which the promotion is to be

made. A bill is now before the Congress having for its object to secure

the promotion of officers to various grades at reasonable ages through

a process of selection, by boards of officers, of the least efficient

for retirement with a percentage of their pay depending upon length of

service. The bill, although not accomplishing all that should be done,

is a long step in the right direction; and I earnestly recommend its

passage, or that of a more completely effective measure.

The cavalry arm should be reorganized upon modern lines. This is an arm

in which it is peculiarly necessary that the field officers should not

be old. The cavalry is much more difficult to form than infantry, and

it should be kept up to the maximum both in efficiency and in strength,

for it can not be made in a hurry. At present both infantry and

artillery are too few in number for our needs. Especial attention

should be paid to development of the machine gun. A general service

corps should be established. As things are now the average soldier has

far too much labor of a nonmilitary character to perform.

NATIONAL GUARD.

Now that the organized militia, the National Guard, has been

incorporated with the Army as a part of the national forces, it

behooves the Government to do every reasonable thing in its power to

perfect its efficiency. It should be assisted in its instruction and

otherwise aided more liberally than heretofore. The continuous services

of many well-trained regular officers will be essential in this

connection. Such officers must be specially trained at service schools

best to qualify them as instructors of the National Guard. But the

detailing of officers for training at the service schools and for duty

with the National Guard entails detaching them from their regiments

which are already greatly depleted by detachment of officers for

assignment to duties prescribed by acts of the Congress.

A bill is now pending before the Congress creating a number of extra

officers in the Army, which if passed, as it ought to be, will enable

more officers to be trained as instructors of the National Guard and

assigned to that duty. In case of war it will be of the utmost

importance to have a large number of trained officers to use for

turning raw levies into good troops.

There should be legislation to provide a complete plan for organizing

the great body of volunteers behind the Regular Army and National Guard

when war has come. Congressional assistance should be given those who

are endeavoring to promote rifle practice so that our men, in the

services or out of them, may know how to use the rifle. While teams

representing the United States won the rifle and revolver championships

of the world against all comers in England this year, it is

unfortunately true that the great body of our citizens shoot less and

less as time goes on. To meet this we should encourage rifle practice

among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the

military services, by every means in our power. Thus, and not

otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving the peace of the

world. Fit to hold our own against the strong nations of the earth, our

voice for peace will carry to the ends of the earth. Unprepared, and

therefore unfit, we must sit dumb and helpless to defend ourselves,

protect others, or preserve peace. The first step--in the direction of

preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it

should come--is to teach our men to shoot.

THE NAVY.

I approve the recommendations of the General Board for the increase of

the Navy, calling especial attention to the need of additional

destroyers and colliers, and above all, of the four battleships. It is

desirable to complete as soon as possible a squadron of eight

battleships of the best existing type. The North Dakota, Delaware,

Florida, and Utah will form the first division of this squadron. The

four vessels proposed will form the second division. It will be an

improvement on the first, the ships being of the heavy, single caliber,

all big gun type. All the vessels should have the same tactical

qualities--that is, speed and turning circle--and as near as possible

these tactical qualities should be the same as in the four vessels

before named now being built.

I most earnestly recommend that the General Board be by law turned into

a General Staff. There is literally no excuse whatever for continuing

the present bureau organization of the Navy. The Navy should be treated

as a purely military organization, and everything should be

subordinated to the one object of securing military efficiency. Such

military efficiency can only be guaranteed in time of war if there is

the most thorough previous preparation in time of peace--a preparation,

I may add, which will in all probability prevent any need of war. The

Secretary must be supreme, and he should have as his official advisers

a body of line officers who should themselves have the power to pass

upon and coordinate all the work and all the proposals of the several

bureaus. A system of promotion by merit, either by selection or by

exclusion, or by both processes, should be introduced. It is out of the

question, if the present principle of promotion by mere seniority is

kept, to expect to get the best results from the higher officers. Our

men come too old, and stay for too short a time, in the high command

positions.

Two hospital ships should be provided. The actual experience of the

hospital ship with the fleet in the Pacific has shown the invaluable

work which such a ship does, and has also proved that it is well to

have it kept under the command of a medical officer. As was to be

expected, all of the anticipations of trouble from such a command have

proved completely baseless. It is as absurd to put a hospital ship

under a line officer as it would be to put a hospital on shore under

such a command. This ought to have been realized before, and there is

no excuse for failure to realize it now.

Nothing better for the Navy from every standpoint has ever occurred

than the cruise of the battle fleet around the world. The improvement

of the ships in every way has been extraordinary, and they have gained

far more experience in battle tactics than they would have gained if

they had stayed in the Atlantic waters. The American people have cause

for profound gratification, both in view of the excellent condition of

the fleet as shown by this cruise, and in view of the improvement the

cruise has worked in this already high condition. I do not believe that

there is any other service in the world in which the average of

character and efficiency in the enlisted men is as high as is now the

case in our own. I believe that the same statement can be made as to

our officers, taken as a whole; but there must be a reservation made in

regard to those in the highest ranks--as to which I have already

spoken--and in regard to those who have just entered the service;

because we do not now get full benefit from our excellent naval school

at Annapolis. It is absurd not to graduate the midshipmen as ensigns;

to keep them for two years in such an anomalous position as at present

the law requires is detrimental to them and to the service. In the

academy itself, every first classman should be required in turn to

serve as petty officer and officer; his ability to discharge his duties

as such should be a prerequisite to his going into the line, and his

success in commanding should largely determine his standing at

graduation. The Board of Visitors should be appointed in January, and

each member should be required to give at least six days' service, only

from one to three days' to be performed during June week, which is the

least desirable time for the board to be at Annapolis so far as

benefiting the Navy by their observations is concerned.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

Tuesday, December 8, 1908.

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