Message
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
The Congress assembles this year under the shadow
of a great calamity. On the sixth of September,
President McKinley was shot by an anarchist
while attending the Pan-American Exposition at
Buffalo, and died in that city on the fourteenth of
that month.
Of the last seven elected Presidents, he is the
third who has been murdered, and the bare recital
of this fact is sufficient to justify grave alarm
among all loyal American citizens. Moreover, the
circumstances of this, the third assassination of an
American President, have a peculiarity sinister significance.
Both President Lincoln and President
Garfield were killed by assassins of types unfortunately
not uncommon in history; President Lincoln
falling a victim to the terrible passions aroused by
four years of civil war, and President Garfield to
the revengeful vanity of a disappointed office-seeker.
President McKinley was killed by an utterly depraved
criminal belonging to that body of criminals
who object to all governments, good and bad alike,
who are against any form of popular liberty if it
is guaranteed by even the most just and liberal laws,
and who are as hostile to the upright exponent of
a free people’s sober will as to the tyrannical and
irresponsible despot.
It is not too much to say that at the time of President
McKinley’s death he was the most widely loved
man in all the United States; while we have never
had any public man of his position who has been
so wholly free from the bitter animosities incident
to public life. His political opponents were the first
to bear the heartiest and most generous tribute to
the broad kindliness of nature, the sweetness and
gentleness of character which so endeared him to
his close associates. To a standard of lofty integrity
in public life he united the tender affections
and home virtues which are all-important in the
make-up of national character. A gallant soldier
in the great war for the Union, he also shone
as an example to all our people because of his
conduct in the most sacred and intimate of
home relations. There could be no personal
hatred of him, for he never acted with aught
but consideration for the welfare of others. No one
could fail to respect him who knew him in public or
private life. The defenders of those murderous
criminals who seek to excuse their criminality by
asserting that it is exercised for political ends, inveigh
against wealth and irresponsible power. But
for this assassination even this base apology can
not be urged.
President McKinley was a man of moderate
means, a man whose stock sprang from the sturdy
tillers of the soil, who had himself belonged among
the wage-workers, who had entered the Army as a
private soldier. Wealth was not struck at when
the President was assassinated, but the honest toil
which is content with moderate gains after a lifetime
of unremitting labor, largely in the service of
the public. Still less was power struck at in the
sense that power is irresponsible or centred in the
hands of any one individual. The blow was not
aimed at tyranny or wealth. It was aimed at one
of the strongest champions the wage-worker has
ever had; at one of the most faithful representatives
of the system of public rights and representative
government who has ever risen to public office.
President McKinley filled that political office for
which the entire people vote, and no President—not
even Lincoln himself—was ever more earnestly anxious
to represent the well thought out wishes of the
people; his one anxiety in every crisis was to keep
in closest touch with the people—to find out what
they thought and to endeavor to give expression to
their thought, after having endeavored to guide
that thought aright. He had just been re-elected
to the Presidency because the majority of our citizens,
the majority of our farmers and wage-workers,
believed that he had faithfully upheld their interests
for four years. They felt themselves in close
and intimate touch with him. They felt that he
represented so well and so honorably all their ideals
and aspirations that they wished him to continue
for another four years to represent them.
And this was the man at whom the assassin
struck! That there might be nothing lacking to
complete the Judas-like infamy of his act, he took
advantage of an occasion when the President was
meeting the people generally; and advancing as if
to take the hand outstretched to him in kindly and
brotherly fellowship, he turned the noble and generous
confidence of the victim into an opportunity
to strike the fatal blow. There is no baser deed in
all the annals of crime.
The shock, the grief of the country, are bitter in
the minds of all who saw the dark days while the
President yet hovered between life and death. At
last the light was stilled in the kindly eyes and the
breath went from the lips that even in mortal agony
uttered no words save of forgiveness to his murderer,
of love for his friends, and of unfaltering
trust in the will of the Most High. Such a death,
crowning the glory of such a life, leaves us with infinite
sorrow, but with such pride in what he had
accomplished and in his own personal character, that
we feel the blow not as struck at him, but as struck
at the nation. We mourn a good and great President
who is dead; but while we mourn we are lifted
up by the splendid achievements of his life and the
grand heroism with which he met his death.
When we turn from the man to the nation, the
harm done is so great as to excite our gravest apprehensions
and to demand our wisest and most
resolute action. This criminal was a professed
anarchist, inflamed by the teachings of professed anarchists,
and probably also by the reckless utterances
of those who, on the stump and in the public press,
appeal to the dark and evil spirits of malice and
greed, envy and sullen hatred. The wind is sowed
by the men who preach such doctrines, and they can
not escape their share of responsibility for the whirlwind
that is reaped. This applies alike to the deliberate
demagogue, to the exploiter of sensationalism,
and to the crude and foolish visionary who, for whatever
reason, apologizes for crime or excites aimless
discontent.
The blow was aimed not at this President, but at
all Presidents; at every symbol of government.
President McKinley was as emphatically the embodiment
of the popular will of the nation expressed
through the forms of law as a New England town
meeting is in similar fashion the embodiment of the
law-abiding purpose and practice of the people of
the town. On no conceivable theory could the murder
of the President be accepted as due to protest
against “inequalities in the social order,” save as
the murder of all the freemen engaged in a town
meeting could be accepted as a protest against that
social inequality which puts a malefactor in jail.
Anarchy is no more an expression of “social discontent”
than picking pockets or wife-beating.
The anarchist, and especially the anarchist in the
United States, is merely one type of criminal, more
dangerous than any other because he represents the
same depravity in a greater degree. The man who
advocates anarchy directly or indirectly, in any shape
or fashion, or the man who apologizes for anarchists
and their deeds, makes himself morally accessory to
murder before the fact. The anarchist is a criminal
whose perverted instincts lead him to prefer confusion
and chaos to the most beneficent form of social
order. His protest of concern for workingmen is
outrageous in its impudent falsity; for if the political
institutions of this country do not afford opportunity
to every honest and intelligent son of toil, then the
door of hope is forever closed against him. The
anarchist is everywhere not merely the enemy of
system and of progress, but the deadly foe of liberty.
If ever anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last
for but one red moment, to be succeeded for ages
by the gloomy night of despotism.
For the anarchist himself, whether he preaches
or practices his doctrines, we need not have one particle
more concern than for any ordinary murderer.
He is not the victim of social or political injustice.
There are no wrongs to remedy in his case. The
cause of his criminality is to be found in his own
evil passions and in the evil conduct of those who
urge him on, not in any failure by others or by the
State to do justice to him or his. He is a malefactor
and nothing else. He is in no sense, in no shape
or way, a “product of social conditions,” save as a
highwayman is “produced” by the fact that an unarmed
man happens to have a purse. It is a travesty
upon the great and holy names of liberty and freedom
to permit them to be invoked in such a cause.
No man or body of men preaching anarchistic doctrines
should be allowed at large any more than if
preaching the murder of some specified private individual.
Anarchistic speeches, writings, and meetings
are essentially seditious and treasonable.
I earnestly recommend to the Congress that in the
exercise of its wise discretion it should take into
consideration the coming to this country of anarchists
or persons professing principles hostile to all
government and justifying the murder of those
placed in authority. Such individuals as those who
not long ago gathered in open meeting to glorify the
murder of King Humbert of Italy perpetrate a
crime, and the law should ensure their rigorous punishment.
They and those like them should be kept
out of this country; and if found here they should
be promptly deported to the country whence they
came; and far-reaching provisions should be made
for the punishment of those who stay. No matter
calls more urgently for the wisest thought of the
Congress.
The Federal courts should be given jurisdiction
over any man who kills or attempts to kill the
President or any man who by the Constitution or
by law is in line of succession for the Presidency,
while the punishment for an unsuccessful attempt
should be proportioned to the enormity of the offence
against our institutions.
Anarchy is a crime against the whole human race;
and all mankind should band against the anarchist.
His crime should be made an offence against the
law of nations, like piracy and that form of man-stealing
known as the slave trade; for it is of far
blacker infamy than either. It should be so declared
by treaties among all civilized powers. Such treaties
would give to the Federal Government the power of
dealing with the crime.
A grim commentary upon the folly of the anarchist
position was afforded by the attitude of the law
toward this very criminal who had just taken the life
of the President. The people would have torn him
limb from limb if it had not been that the law he
defied was at once invoked in his behalf. So far
from his deed being committed on behalf of the people
against the government, the government was
obliged at once to exert its full police power to save
him from instant death at the hands of the people.
Moreover, his deed worked not the slightest dislocation
in our governmental system, and the danger
of a recurrence of such deeds, no matter how great
it might grow, would work only in the direction of
strengthening and giving harshness to the forces of
order. No man will ever be restrained from becoming
President by any fear as to his personal safety.
If the risk to the President’s life became great, it
would mean that the office would more and more
come to be filled by men of a spirit which would
make them resolute and merciless in dealing with
every friend of disorder. This great country will
not fall into anarchy, and if anarchists should ever
become a serious menace to its institutions, they
would not merely be stamped out, but would involve
in their own ruin every active or passive sympathizer
with their doctrines. The American people are slow
to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it
burns like a consuming flame.
During the last five years business confidence has
been restored and the nation is to be congratulated
because of its present abounding prosperity. Such
prosperity can never be created by law alone, although
it is easy enough to destroy it by mischievous
laws. If the hand of the Lord is heavy upon any
country, if flood or drought comes, human wisdom
is powerless to avert the calamity. Moreover, no law
can guard us against the consequences of our own
folly. The men who are idle or credulous, the men
who seek gains not by genuine work with head or
hand but by gambling in any form, are always a
source of menace not only to themselves but to
others. If the business world loses its head, it loses
what legislation can not supply. Fundamentally the
welfare of each citizen, and therefore the welfare
of the aggregate of citizens which makes the nation,
must rest upon individual thrift and energy, resolution
and intelligence. Nothing can take the place
of this individual capacity; but wise legislation and
honest and intelligent administration can give it the
fullest scope, the largest opportunity to work to good
effect.
The tremendous and highly complex industrial development
which went on with ever accelerated rapidity
during the latter half of the nineteenth century
brings us face to face, at the beginning of the
twentieth, with very serious social problems. The
old laws, and the old customs which had almost the
binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to
regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth.
Since the industrial changes which have so enormously
increased the productive power of mankind,
they are no longer sufficient.
The growth of cities has gone on beyond comparison
faster than the growth of the country, and the
upbuilding of the great industrial centres has meant
a startling increase, not merely in the aggregate of
wealth, but in the number of very large individual,
and especially of very large corporate, fortunes. The
creation of these great corporate fortunes has not
been due to the tariff nor to any other governmental
action, but to natural causes in the business world,
operating in other countries as they operate in our
own.
The process has aroused much antagonism, a great
part of which is wholly without warrant. It is not
true that as the rich have grown richer the poor have
grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has
the average man, the wage-worker, the farmer, the
small trader, been so well off as in this country and
at the present time. There have been abuses connected
with the accumulation of wealth; yet it remains
true that a fortune accumulated in legitimate
business can be accumulated by the person specially
benefited only on condition of conferring immense
incidental benefits upon others. Successful enterprise,
of the type which benefits all mankind, can
only exist if the conditions are such as to offer great
prizes as the rewards of success.
The captains of industry who have driven the
railway systems across this continent, who have
built up our commerce, who have developed our manufactures,
have on the whole done great good to
our people. Without them the material development
of which we are so justly proud could never
have taken place. Moreover, we should recognize
the immense importance to this material development
of leaving as unhampered as is compatible with
the public good the strong and forceful men upon
whom the success of business operations inevitably
rests. The slightest study of business conditions
will satisfy any one capable of forming a judgment
that the personal equation is the most important factor
in a business operation; that the business ability
of the man at the head of any business concern, big
or little, is usually the factor which fixes the gulf
between striking success and hopeless failure.
An additional reason for caution in dealing with
corporations is to be found in the international commercial
conditions of to-day. The same business
conditions which have produced the great aggregations
of corporate and individual wealth have made
them very potent factors in international commercial
competition. Business concerns which have the
largest means at their disposal and are managed by
the ablest men are naturally those which take the lead
in the strife for commercial supremacy among the
nations of the world. America has only just begun
to assume that commanding position in the international
business world which we believe will
more and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance
that this position be not jeoparded, especially
at a time when the overflowing abundance of our
own natural resources and the skill, business energy,
and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign
markets essential. Under such conditions it would
be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful
strength of our nation.
Moreover, it can not too often be pointed out that
to strike with ignorant violence at the interests of
one set of men almost inevitably endangers the interests
of all. The fundamental rule in our national
life—the rule which underlies all others—is that,
on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up
or down together. There are exceptions; and in
times of prosperity some will prosper far more, and
in times of adversity some will suffer far more, than
others; but speaking generally, a period of good
times means that all share more or less in them, and
in a period of hard times all feel the stress to a
greater or less degree. It surely ought not to be
necessary to enter into any proof of this statement;
the memory of the lean years which began in 1893
is still vivid, and we can contrast them with the
conditions in this very year which is now closing.
Disaster to great business enterprises can never have
its effects limited to the men at the top. It spreads
throughout, and while it is bad for everybody, it is
worst for those furthest down. The capitalist may
be shorn of his luxuries; but the wage-worker may
be deprived of even bare necessities.
The mechanism of modern business is so delicate
that extreme care must be taken not to interfere
with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many
of those who have made it their vocation to denounce
the great industrial combinations which are
popularly, although with technical inaccuracy,
known as “trusts,” appeal especially to hatred and
fear. These are precisely the two emotions, particularly
when combined with ignorance, which unfit
men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment.
In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history
of the world shows that legislation will generally
be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken
after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint.
Much of the legislation directed at the trusts
would have been exceedingly mischievous had it
not also been entirely ineffective. In accordance
with a well-known sociological law, the ignorant or
reckless agitator has been the really effective friend
of the evils which he has been nominally opposing.
In dealing with business interests, for the government
to undertake by crude and ill-considered legislation
to do what may turn out to be bad, would be
to incur the risk of such far-reaching national disaster
that it would be preferable to undertake nothing
at all. The men who demand the impossible or
the undesirable serve as the allies of the forces with
which they are nominally at war, for they hamper
those who would endeavor to find out in rational
fashion what the wrongs really are and to what extent
and in what manner it is practicable to apply
remedies.
All this is true; and yet it is also true that there
are real and grave evils, one of the chief being overcapitalization
because of its many baleful consequences;
and a resolute and practical effort must be
made to correct these evils.
There is widespread conviction in the minds of
the American people that the great corporations
known as trusts are in certain of their features and
tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This
springs from no spirit of envy or uncharitableness,
nor lack of pride in the great industrial achievements
that have placed this country at the head of the nations
struggling for commercial supremacy. It does
not rest upon a lack of intelligent appreciation of
the necessity of meeting changing and changed conditions
of trade with new methods, nor upon ignorance
of the fact that combination of capital in the
effort to accomplish great things is necessary when
the world’s progress demands that great things be
done. It is based upon sincere conviction that combination
and concentration should be, not prohibited,
but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled;
and in my judgment this conviction is right.
It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom
of contract to require that when men receive
from government the privilege of doing business
under corporate form, which frees them from individual
responsibility, and enables them to call into
their enterprises the capital of the public, they shall
do so upon absolutely truthful representations as to
the value of the property in which the capital is to
be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate
commerce should be regulated if they are found to
exercise a license working to the public injury. It
should be as much the aim of those who seek for
social betterment to rid the business world of crimes
of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes
of violence. Great corporations exist only because
they are created and safeguarded by our institutions;
and it is therefore our right and our duty to
see that they work in harmony with these institutions.
The first essential in determining how to deal
with the great industrial combinations is knowledge
of the facts—publicity. In the interest of the public,
the government should have the right to inspect
and examine the workings of the great corporations
engaged in interstate business. Publicity is the
only sure remedy which we can now invoke. What
further remedies are needed in the way of governmental
regulation, or taxation, can only be determined
after publicity has been obtained, by process
of law, and in the course of administration. The
first requisite is knowledge, full and complete—knowledge
which may be made public to the world.
Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint
stock or other associations, depending upon any
statutory law for their existence or privileges, should
be subject to proper governmental supervision, and
full and accurate information as to their operations
should be made public regularly at reasonable intervals.
The large corporations, commonly called trusts,
though organized in one State, always do business
in many States, often doing very little business in
the State where they are incorporated. There is
utter lack of uniformity in the State laws about
them; and as no State has any exclusive interest in
or power over their acts, it has in practice proved
impossible to get adequate regulation through State
action. Therefore, in the interest of the whole people,
the Nation should, without interfering with the
power of the States in the matter itself, also assume
power of supervision and regulation over all corporations
doing an interstate business. This is especially
true where the corporation derives a portion
of its wealth from the existence of some monopolistic
element or tendency in its business. There would
be no hardship in such supervision; banks are subject
to it, and in their case it is now accepted as a
simple matter of course. Indeed, it is probable that
supervision of corporations by the National Government
need not go so far as is now the case with the
supervision exercised over them by so conservative
a State as Massachusetts, in order to produce excellent
results.
When the Constitution was adopted, at the end
of the eighteenth century, no human wisdom could
foretell the sweeping changes, alike in industrial
and political conditions, which were to take place
by the beginning of the twentieth century. At that
time it was accepted as a matter of course that the
several States were the proper authorities to regulate,
so far as was then necessary, the comparatively
insignificant and strictly localized corporate bodies
of the day. The conditions are now wholly different
and wholly different action is called for. I believe
that a law can be framed which will enable the National
Government to exercise control along the lines
above indicated, profiting by the experience gained
through the passage and administration of the Interstate
Commerce Act. If, however, the judgment
of the Congress is that it lacks the constitutional
power to pass such an act, then a constitutional
amendment should be submitted to confer the
power.
There should be created a Cabinet officer, to be
known as Secretary of Commerce and Industries,
as provided in the bill introduced at the last session
of the Congress. It should be his province to deal
with commerce in its broadest sense; including
among many other things whatever concerns labor
and all matters affecting the great business corporations
and our merchant marine.
The course proposed is one phase of what should
be a comprehensive and far-reaching scheme of constructive
statesmanship for the purpose of broadening
our markets, securing our business interests on
a safe basis, and making firm our new position in
the international industrial world, while scrupulously
safeguarding the rights of wage-worker and capitalist,
of investor and private citizen, so as to secure
equity as between man and man in this Republic.
With the sole exception of the farming interest,
no one matter is of such vital moment to our whole
people as the welfare of the wage-workers. If the
farmer and the wage-worker are well off, it is absolutely
certain that all others will be well off too.
It is therefore a matter for hearty congratulation
that on the whole wages are higher to-day in the
United States than ever before in our history, and
far higher than in any other country. The standard
of living is also higher than ever before. Every
effort of legislator and administrator should be bent
to secure the permanency of this condition of things
and its improvement wherever possible. Not only
must our labor be protected by the tariff, but it
should also be protected so far as it is possible from
the presence in this country of any laborers brought
over by contract, or of those who, coming freely,
yet represent a standard of living so depressed that
they can undersell our men in the labor market and
drag them to a lower level. I regard it as necessary,
with this end in view, to re-enact immediately the
law excluding Chinese laborers and to strengthen
it wherever necessary in order to make its enforcement
entirely effective.
The National Government should demand the
highest quality of service from its employees; and
in return it should be a good employer. If possible
legislation should be passed, in connection with the
Interstate Commerce Law, which will render effective
the efforts of different States to do away with
the competition of convict contract labor in the open
labor market. So far as practicable under the conditions
of government work, provision should be
made to render the enforcement of the eight-hour
law easy and certain. In all industries carried on
directly or indirectly for the United States Government
women and children should be protected from
excessive hours of labor, from night work, and from
work under unsanitary conditions. The government
should provide in its contracts that all work
should be done under “fair” conditions, and in addition
to setting a high standard should uphold it
by proper inspection, extending if necessary to the
subcontractors. The government should forbid all
night work for women and children, as well as excessive
overtime. For the District of Columbia a
good factory law should be passed; and, as a powerful
indirect aid to such laws, provision should be
made to turn the inhabited alleys, the existence of
which is a reproach to our Capital City, into minor
streets, where the inhabitants can live under conditions
favorable to health and morals.
American wage-workers work with their heads
as well as their hands. Moreover, they take a keen
pride in what they are doing; so that, independent
of the reward, they wish to turn out a perfect job.
This is the great secret of our success in competition
with the labor of foreign countries.
The most vital problem with which this country,
and for that matter the whole civilized world, has to
deal, is the problem which has for one side the betterment
of social conditions, moral and physical,
in large cities, and for another side the effort to
deal with that tangle of far-reaching questions
which we group together when we speak of “labor.”
The chief factor in the success of each man—wage-worker,
farmer, and capitalist alike—must ever be
the sum total of his own individual qualities and
abilities. Second only to this comes the power of
acting in combination or association with others.
Very great good has been and will be accomplished
by associations or unions of wage-workers, when
managed with forethought, and when they combine
insistence upon their own rights with law-abiding
respect for the rights of others. The display of
these qualities in such bodies is a duty to the nation
no less than to the associations themselves. Finally,
there must also in many cases be action by the government
in order to safeguard the rights and interests
of all. Under our Constitution there is much
more scope for such action by the State and the
municipality than by the nation. But on points such
as those touched on above the National Government
can act.
When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood
remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success
in the kind of national life for which we strive.
Each man must work for himself, and unless he
so works no outside help can avail him; but each
man must remember also that he is indeed his
brother’s keeper, and that while no man who refuses
to walk can be carried with advantage to himself
or any one else, yet that each at times stumbles or
halts, that each at times needs to have the helping
hand outstretched to him. To be permanently effective,
aid must always take the form of helping
a man to help himself; and we can all best help ourselves
by joining together in the work that is of
common interest to all.
Our present immigration laws are unsatisfactory.
We need every honest and efficient immigrant fitted
to become an American citizen, every immigrant
who comes here to stay, who brings here a strong
body, a stout heart, a good head, and a resolute
purpose to do his duty well in every way and to
bring up his children as law-abiding and God-fearing
members of the community. But there should
be a comprehensive law enacted with the object of
working a threefold improvement over our present
system. First, we should aim to exclude absolutely
not only all persons who are known to be believers
in anarchistic principles or members of anarchistic
societies, but also all persons who are of a low
moral tendency or of unsavory reputation. This
means that we should require a more thorough system
of inspection abroad and a more rigid system
of examination at our immigration ports, the former
being especially necessary.
The second object of a proper immigration law
ought to be to secure by a careful and not merely
perfunctory educational test some intelligent capacity
to appreciate American institutions and act
sanely as American citizens. This would not keep
out all anarchists, for many of them belong to the
intelligent criminal class. But it would do what is
also in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of
ignorance, so potent in producing the envy, suspicion,
malignant passion, and hatred of order, out of
which anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs. Finally,
all persons should be excluded who are below
a certain standard of economic fitness to enter our
industrial field as competitors with American labor.
There should be proper proof of personal capacity
to earn an American living and enough money to
ensure a decent start under American conditions.
This would stop the influx of cheap labor, and the
resulting competition which gives rise to so much of
bitterness in American industrial life; and it would
dry up the springs of the pestilential social conditions
in our great cities, where anarchistic organizations
have their greatest possibility of growth.
Both the educational and economic tests in a wise
immigration law should be designed to protect and
elevate the general body politic and social. A very
close supervision should be exercised over the steamship
companies which mainly bring over the immigrants,
and they should be held to a strict accountability
for any infraction of the law.
There is general acquiescence in our present tariff
system as a national policy. The first requisite to
our prosperity is the continuity and stability of this
economic policy. Nothing could be more unwise
than to disturb the business interests of the country
by any general tariff change at this time. Doubt,
apprehension, uncertainty are exactly what we most
wish to avoid in the interest of our commercial and
material well-being. Our experience in the past
has shown that sweeping revisions of the tariff are
apt to produce conditions closely approaching panic
in the business world. Yet it is not only possible,
but eminently desirable, to combine with the stability
of our economic system a supplementary system of
reciprocal benefit and obligation with other nations.
Such reciprocity is an incident and result of the firm
establishment and preservation of our present economic
policy. It was specially provided for in the
present tariff law.
Reciprocity must be treated as the handmaiden of
protection. Our first duty is to see that the protection
granted by the tariff in every case where it is
needed is maintained, and that reciprocity be sought
for so far as it can safely be done without injury to
our home industries. Just how far this is must be
determined according to the individual case, remembering
always that every application of our tariff
policy to meet our shifting national needs must be
conditioned upon the cardinal fact that the duties
must never be reduced below the point that will
cover the difference between the labor cost here and
abroad. The well-being of the wage-worker is a
prime consideration of our entire policy of economic
legislation.
Subject to this proviso of the proper protection
necessary to our industrial well-being at home, the
principle of reciprocity must command our hearty
support. The phenomenal growth of our export
trade emphasizes the urgency of the need for wider
markets and for a liberal policy in dealing with foreign
nations. Whatever is merely petty and vexatious
in the way of trade restrictions should be
avoided. The customers to whom we dispose of our
surplus products in the long run, directly or indirectly,
purchase those surplus products by giving
us something in return. Their ability to purchase
our products should as far as possible be secured by
so arranging our tariff as to enable us to take from
them those products which we can use without harm
to our own industries and labor, or the use of which
will be of marked benefit to us.
It is most important that we should maintain the
high level of our present prosperity. We have now
reached the point in the development of our interests
where we are not only able to supply our own markets
but to produce a constantly growing surplus for
which we must find markets abroad. To secure these
markets we can utilize existing duties in any case
where they are no longer needed for the purpose of
protection, or in any case where the article is not
produced here and the duty is no longer necessary
for revenue, as giving us something to offer in exchange
for what we ask. The cordial relations with
other nations which are so desirable will naturally
be promoted by the course thus required by our own
interests.
The natural line of development for a policy of
reciprocity will be in connection with those of our
productions which no longer require all of the support
once needed to establish them upon a sound
basis, and with those others where either because
of natural or of economic causes we are beyond the
reach of successful competition.
I ask the attention of the Senate to the reciprocity
treaties laid before it by my predecessor.
The condition of the American merchant marine
is such as to call for immediate remedial action by
the Congress. It is discreditable to us as a nation
that our merchant marine should be utterly insignificant
in comparison to that of other nations which
we overtop in other forms of business. We should
not longer submit to conditions under which only a
trifling portion of our great commerce is carried in
our own ships. To remedy this state of things
would not merely serve to build up our shipping interests,
but it would also result in benefit to all who
are interested in the permanent establishment of a
wider market for American products, and would
provide an auxiliary force for the navy. Ships
work for their own countries just as railroads work
for their terminal points. Shipping lines, if established
to the principal countries with which we have
dealings, would be of political as well as commercial
benefit. From every standpoint it is unwise for the
United States to continue to rely upon the ships of
competing nations for the distribution of our goods.
It should be made advantageous to carry American
goods in American-built ships.
At present American shipping is under certain
great disadvantages when put in competition with
the shipping of foreign countries. Many of the fast
foreign steamships, at a speed of fourteen knots or
above, are subsidized; and all our ships, sailing vessels
and steamers alike, cargo carriers of slow speed
and mail carriers of high speed, have to meet the
fact that the original cost of building American
ships is greater than is the case abroad; that the
wages paid the officers and seamen are very much
higher than those paid the officers and seamen of
foreign competing countries; and that the standard
of living on our ships is far superior to the standard
of living on the ships of our commercial rivals.
Our government should take such action as will
remedy these inequalities. The American merchant
marine should be restored to the ocean.
The Act of March 14, 1900, intended unequivocally
to establish gold as the standard money and to
maintain at a parity therewith all forms of money
medium in use with us, has been shown to be timely
and judicious. The price of our government bonds
in the world’s market, when compared with the price
of similar obligations issued by other nations, is a
flattering tribute to our public credit. This condition
it is evidently desirable to maintain.
In many respects the National Banking Law furnishes
sufficient liberty for the proper exercise of
the banking function; but there seems to be need
of better safeguards against the deranging influence
of commercial crises and financial panics. Moreover,
the currency of the country should be made
responsive to the demands of our domestic trade and
commerce.
The collections from duties on imports and internal
taxes continue to exceed the ordinary expenditures
of the government, thanks mainly to the
reduced army expenditures. The utmost care should
be taken not to reduce the revenues so that there
will be any possibility of a deficit; but, after providing
against any such contingency, means should be
adopted which will bring the revenues more nearly
within the limit of our actual needs. In his report
to the Congress the Secretary of the Treasury considers
all these questions at length, and I ask your
attention to the report and recommendations.
I call special attention to the need of strict economy
in expenditures. The fact that our national
needs forbid us to be niggardly in providing whatever
is actually necessary to our well-being, should
make us doubly careful to husband our national resources,
as each of us husbands his private resources,
by scrupulous avoidance of anything like wasteful
or reckless expenditure. Only by avoidance of
spending money on what is needless or unjustifiable
can we legitimately keep our income to the point
required to meet our needs that are genuine.
In 1887 a measure was enacted for the regulation
of interstate railways, commonly known as the Interstate
Commerce Act. The cardinal provisions of
that act were that railway rates should be just and
reasonable and that all shippers, localities, and commodities
should be accorded equal treatment. A
commission was created and endowed with what
were supposed to be the necessary powers to execute
the provisions of this act.
That law was largely an experiment. Experience
has shown the wisdom of its purposes, but has
also shown, possibly that some of its requirements
are wrong, certainly that the means devised for the
enforcement of its provisions are defective. Those
who complain of the management of the railways
allege that established rates are not maintained;
that rebates and similar devices are habitually resorted
to; that these preferences are usually in favor
of the large shipper; that they drive out of business
the smaller competitor; that while many rates are
too low, many others are excessive; and that gross
preferences are made, affecting both localities and
commodities. Upon the other hand, the railways
assert that the law by its very terms tends to produce
many of these illegal practices by depriving carriers
of that right of concerted action which they claim
is necessary to establish and maintain non-discriminating
rates.
The act should be amended. The railway is a
public servant. Its rates should be just to and open
to all shippers alike. The government should see to
it that within its jurisdiction this is so and should
provide a speedy, inexpensive, and effective remedy
to that end. At the same time it must not be forgotten
that our railways are the arteries through
which the commercial lifeblood of this nation flows.
Nothing could be more foolish than the enactment
of legislation which would unnecessarily interfere
with the development and operation of these commercial
agencies. The subject is one of great importance
and calls for the earnest attention of the
Congress.
The Department of Agriculture during the past
fifteen years has steadily broadened its work on economic
lines, and has accomplished results of real
value in upbuilding domestic and foreign trade. It
has gone into new fields until it is now in touch with
all sections of our country and with two of the island
groups that have lately come under our jurisdiction,
whose people must look to agriculture as a livelihood.
It is searching the world for grains, grasses,
fruits, and vegetables specially fitted for introduction
into localities in the several States and Territories
where they may add materially to our resources. By
scientific attention to soil survey and possible new
crops, to breeding of new varieties of plants, to experimental
shipments, to animal industry and applied
chemistry, very practical aid has been given our
farming and stock-growing interests. The products
of the farm have taken an unprecedented place in
our export trade during the year that has just closed.
Public opinion throughout the United States has
moved steadily toward a just appreciation of the
value of forests, whether planted or of natural
growth. The great part played by them in the creation
and maintenance of the national wealth is now
more fully realized than ever before.
Wise forest protection does not mean the withdrawal
of forest resources, whether of wood, water,
or grass, from contributing their full share to the
welfare of the people, but, on the contrary, gives the
assurance of larger and more certain supplies. The
fundamental idea of forestry is the perpetuation of
forests by use. Forest protection is not an end of itself;
it is a means to increase and sustain the resources
of our country and the industries which depend
upon them. The preservation of our forests is
an imperative business necessity. We have come to
see clearly that whatever destroys the forest, except
to make way for agriculture, threatens our well-being.
The practical usefulness of the national forest reserves
to the mining, grazing, irrigation, and other
interests of the regions in which the reserves lie has
led to a widespread demand by the people of the
West for their protection and extension. The forest
reserves will inevitably be of still greater use in
the future than in the past. Additions should be
made to them whenever practicable, and their usefulness
should be increased by a thoroughly businesslike
management.
At present the protection of the forest reserves
rests with the General Land Office, the mapping and
description of their timber with the United States
Geological Survey, and the preparation of plans for
their conservative use with the Bureau of Forestry,
which is also charged with the general advancement
of practical forestry in the United States. These various
functions should be united in the Bureau of
Forestry, to which they properly belong. The present
diffusion of responsibility is bad from every
standpoint. It prevents that effective co-operation
between the government and the men who utilize the
resources of the reserves, without which the interests
of both must suffer. The scientific bureaus generally
should be put under the Department of Agriculture.
The President should have by law the
power of transferring lands for use as forest reserves
to the Department of Agriculture. He already
has such power in the case of lands needed by the
Departments of War and the Navy.
The wise administration of the forest reserves
will be not less helpful to the interests which depend
on water than to those which depend on wood and
grass. The water supply itself depends upon the
forest. In the arid region it is water, not land,
which measures production. The western half of
the United States would sustain a population greater
than that of our whole country to-day if the waters
that now run to waste were saved and used for irrigation.
The forest and water problems are perhaps
the most vital internal questions of the United
States.
Certain of the forest reserves should also be made
preserves for the wild forest creatures. All of the reserves
should be better protected from fires. Many
of them need special protection because of the great
injury done by live stock, above all by sheep. The
increase in deer, elk, and other animals in the Yellowstone
Park shows what may be expected when
other mountain forests are properly protected by law
and properly guarded. Some of these areas have
been so denuded of surface vegetation by over-grazing
that the ground breeding birds, including grouse
and quail, and many mammals, including deer, have
been exterminated or driven away. At the same
time the water-storing capacity of the surface has
been decreased or destroyed, thus promoting floods
in times of rain and diminishing the flow of streams
between rains.
In cases where natural conditions have been restored
for a few years, vegetation has again carpeted
the ground, birds and deer are coming back,
and hundreds of persons, especially from the immediate
neighborhood, come each summer to enjoy
the privilege of camping. Some at least of the forest
reserves should afford perpetual protection to the
native fauna and flora, safe havens of refuge to
our rapidly diminishing wild animals of the larger
kinds, and free camping grounds for the ever-increasing
numbers of men and women who have
learned to find rest, health, and recreation in the
splendid forests and flower-clad meadows of our
mountains. The forest reserves should be set apart
forever for the use and benefit of our people as a
whole and not sacrificed to the shortsighted greed
of a few.
The forests are natural reservoirs. By restraining
the streams in flood and replenishing them in
drought they make possible the use of waters otherwise
wasted. They prevent the soil from washing,
and so protect the storage reservoirs from filling
up with silt. Forest conservation is therefore an
essential condition of water conservation.
The forests alone can not, however, fully regulate
and conserve the waters of the arid region. Great
storage works are necessary to equalize the flow of
streams and to save the flood waters. Their construction
has been conclusively shown to be an undertaking
too vast for private effort. Nor can it
be best accomplished by the individual States acting
alone. Far-reaching interstate problems are involved;
and the resources of single States would
often be inadequate. It is properly a national function,
at least in some of its features. It is as right
for the National Government to make the streams
and rivers of the arid region useful by engineering
works for water storage as to make useful the rivers
and harbors of the humid region by engineering
works of another kind. The storing of the floods
in reservoirs at the headwaters of our rivers is but
an enlargement of our present policy of river control,
under which levees are built on the lower reaches
of the same streams.
The Government should construct and maintain
these reservoirs as it does other public works.
Where their purpose is to regulate the flow of
streams, the water should be turned freely into the
channels in the dry season to take the same course
under the same laws as the natural flow.
The reclamation of the unsettled arid public lands
presents a different problem. Here it is not enough
to regulate the flow of streams. The object of the
government is to dispose of the land to settlers who
will build homes upon it. To accomplish this object
water must be brought within their reach.
The pioneer settlers on the arid public domain
chose their homes along streams from which they
could themselves divert the water to reclaim their
holdings. Such opportunities are practically gone.
There remain, however, vast areas of public land
which can be made available for homestead settlement,
but only by reservoirs and main-line canals
impracticable for private enterprise. These irrigation
works should be built by the National Government.
The lands reclaimed by them should be reserved
by the Government for actual settlers, and the
cost of construction should so far as possible be repaid
by the land reclaimed. The distribution of
the water, the division of the streams among irrigators,
should be left to the settlers themselves in
conformity with State laws and without interference
with those laws or with vested rights. The policy
of the National Government should be to aid irrigation
in the several States and Territories in such
manner as will enable the people in the local communities
to help themselves, and as will stimulate needed
reforms in the State laws and regulations governing
irrigation.
The reclamation and settlement of the arid lands
will enrich every portion of our country, just as
the settlement of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys
brought prosperity to the Atlantic States. The increased
demand for manufactured articles will stimulate
industrial production, while wider home markets
and the trade of Asia will consume the larger
food supplies and effectually prevent Western competition
with Eastern agriculture. Indeed, the
products of irrigation will be consumed chiefly in
upbuilding local centres of mining and other industries,
which would otherwise not come into existence
at all. Our people as a whole will profit, for successful
home-making is but another name for the
upbuilding of the Nation.
The necessary foundation has already been laid
for the inauguration of the policy just described.
It would be unwise to begin by doing too much, for
a great deal will doubtless be learned, both as to
what can and what can not be safely attempted, by
the early efforts, which must of necessity be partly
experimental in character. At the very beginning
the Government should make clear, beyond shadow
of doubt, its intention to pursue this policy on lines
of the broadest public interest. No reservoir or
canal should ever be built to satisfy selfish personal
or local interests; but only in accordance with the
advice of trained experts, after long investigation
has shown the locality where all the conditions combine
to make the work most needed and fraught
with the greatest usefulness to the community as a
whole. There should be no extravagance, and the
believers in the need of irrigation will most benefit
their cause by seeing to it that it is free from the
least taint of excessive or reckless expenditure of
the public moneys.
Whatever the Nation does for the extension of
irrigation should harmonize with, and tend to improve,
the condition of those now living on irrigated
land. We are not at the starting point of this development.
Over two hundred millions of private
capital has already been expended in the construction
of irrigation works, and many million acres of
arid land reclaimed. A high degree of enterprise
and ability has been shown in the work itself; but
as much can not be said in reference to the laws
relating thereto. The security and value of the
homes created depend largely on the stability of
titles to water; but the majority of these rest on
the uncertain foundation of court decisions rendered
in ordinary suits at law. With a few creditable exceptions,
the arid States have failed to provide for
the certain and just division of streams in times of
scarcity. Lax and uncertain laws have made it possible
to establish rights to water in excess of actual
uses or necessities, and many streams have already
passed into private ownership, or a control equivalent
to ownership.
Whoever controls a stream practically controls the
land it renders productive, and the doctrine of private
ownership of water apart from land can not
prevail without causing enduring wrong. The recognition
of such ownership, which has been permitted
to grow up in the arid regions, should give way
to a more enlightened and larger recognition of the
rights of the public in the control and disposal of
the public water supplies. Laws founded upon conditions
obtaining in humid regions, where water is
too abundant to justify hoarding it, have no proper
application in a dry country.
In the arid States the only right to water which
should be recognized is that of use. In irrigation
this right should attach to the land reclaimed and
be inseparable therefrom. Granting perpetual water
rights to others than users, without compensation to
the public, is open to all the objections which apply
to giving away perpetual franchises to the public
utilities of cities. A few of the Western States have
already recognized this, and have incorporated in
their constitutions the doctrine of perpetual State
ownership of water.
The benefits which have followed the unaided development
of the past justify the nation’s aid and
co-operation in the more difficult and important work
yet to be accomplished. Laws so vitally affecting
homes as those which control the water supply will
only be effective when they have the sanction of the
irrigators; reforms can only be final and satisfactory
when they come through the enlightenment of the
people most concerned. The larger development
which national aid ensures should, however, awaken
in every arid State the determination to make its
irrigation system equal in justice and effectiveness
that of any country in the civilized world. Nothing
could be more unwise than for isolated communities
to continue to learn everything experimentally, instead
of profiting by what is already known elsewhere.
We are dealing with a new and momentous
question, in the pregnant years while institutions
are forming, and what we do will affect not only the
present but future generations.
Our aim should be not simply to reclaim the largest
area of land and provide homes for the largest
number of people, but to create for this new industry
the best possible social and industrial conditions;
and this requires that we not only understand the
existing situation, but avail ourselves of the best
experience of the time in the solution of its problems.
A careful study should be made, both by the Nation
and the States, of the irrigation laws and conditions
here and abroad. Ultimately it will probably be
necessary for the Nation to co-operate with the several
arid States in proportion as these States by their
legislation and administration show themselves fit
to receive it.
In Hawaii our aim must be to develop the Territory
on the traditional American lines. We do not
wish a region of large estates tilled by cheap labor;
we wish a healthy American community of men who
themselves till the farms they own. All our legislation
for the islands should be shaped with this end
in view; the well-being of the average home-maker
must afford the true test of the healthy development
of the islands. The land policy should as nearly as
possible be modeled on our homestead system.
It is a pleasure to say that it is hardly more necessary
to report as to Porto Rico than as to any State
or Territory within our continental limits. The island
is thriving as never before, and it is being administered
efficiently and honestly. Its people are
now enjoying liberty and order under the protection
of the United States, and upon this fact we congratulate
them and ourselves. Their material welfare
must be as carefully and jealously considered as the
welfare of any other portion of our country. We
have given them the great gift of free access for
their products to the markets of the United States.
I ask the attention of the Congress to the need of
legislation concerning the public lands of Porto
Rico.
In Cuba such progress has been made toward putting
the independent government of the island upon
a firm footing that before the present session of the
Congress closes this will be an accomplished fact.
Cuba will then start as her own mistress; and to the
beautiful Queen of the Antilles, as she unfolds this
new page of her destiny, we extend our heartiest
greetings and good wishes. Elsewhere I have discussed
the question of reciprocity. In the case of
Cuba, however, there are weighty reasons of morality
and of national interest why the policy should
be held to have a peculiar application, and I most earnestly
ask your attention to the wisdom, indeed to
the vital need, of providing for a substantial reduction
in the tariff duties on Cuban imports into the
United States. Cuba has in her Constitution affirmed
what we desired, that she should stand, in international
matters, in closer and more friendly relations
with us than with any other power; and we are
bound by every consideration of honor and expediency
to pass commercial measures in the interest
of her material well-being.
In the Philippines our problem is larger. They
are very rich tropical islands, inhabited by many
varying tribes, representing widely different stages
of progress toward civilization. Our earnest effort
is to help these people upward along the stony and
difficult path that leads to self-government. We
hope to make our administration of the islands honorable
to our Nation by making it of the highest
benefit to the Filipinos themselves; and as an earnest
of what we intend to do, we point to what we
have done. Already a greater measure of material
prosperity and of governmental honesty and efficiency
has been attained in the Philippines than ever
before in their history.
It is no light task for a nation to achieve the temperamental
qualities without which the institutions
of free government are but an empty mockery. Our
people are now successfully governing themselves,
because for more than a thousand years they have
been slowly fitting themselves, sometimes consciously,
sometimes unconsciously, toward this end. What
has taken us thirty generations to achieve, we can
not expect to see another race accomplish out of
hand, especially when large portions of that race
start very far behind the point which our ancestors
had reached even thirty generations ago. In dealing
with the Philippine people we must show both
patience and strength, forbearance and steadfast
resolution. Our aim is high. We do not desire to
do for the islanders merely what has elsewhere been
done for tropic peoples by even the best foreign
governments. We hope to do for them what has
never before been done for any people of the tropics—to
make them fit for self-government after the
fashion of the really free nations.
History may safely be challenged to show a single
instance in which a masterful race such as ours, having
been forced by the exigencies of war to take possession
of an alien land, has behaved to its inhabitants
with the disinterested zeal for their progress
that our people have shown in the Philippines. To
leave the islands at this time would mean that they
would fall into a welter of murderous anarchy.
Such desertion of duty on our part would be a crime
against humanity. The character of Governor Taft
and of his associates and subordinates is a proof, if
such be needed, of the sincerity of our effort to give
the islanders a constantly increasing measure of self-government,
exactly as fast as they show themselves
fit to exercise it. Since the civil government was established
not an appointment has been made in the
islands with any reference to considerations of political
influence, or to aught else save the fitness of
the man and the needs of the service.
In our anxiety for the welfare and progress of the
Philippines, it may be that here and there we have
gone too rapidly in giving them local self-government.
It is on this side that our error, if any, has
been committed. No competent observer, sincerely
desirous of finding out the facts and influenced only
by a desire for the welfare of the natives, can assert
that we have not gone far enough. We have gone
to the very verge of safety in hastening the process.
To have taken a single step further or faster in advance
would have been folly and weakness, and
might well have been crime. We are extremely anxious
that the natives shall show the power of governing
themselves. We are anxious, first for their
sakes, and next, because it relieves us of a great
burden. There need not be the slightest fear of our
not continuing to give them all the liberty for which
they are fit.
The only fear is lest in our overanxiety we give
them a degree of independence for which they are
unfit, thereby inviting reaction and disaster. As fast
as there is any reasonable hope that in a given district
the people can govern themselves, self-government
has been given in that district. There is not a
locality fitted for self-government which has not received
it. But it may well be that in certain cases
it will have to be withdrawn because the inhabitants
show themselves unfit to exercise it; such instances
have already occurred. In other words, there is not
the slightest chance of our failing to show a sufficiently
humanitarian spirit. The danger comes in
the opposite direction.
There are still troubles ahead in the islands. The
insurrection has become an affair of local banditti
and marauders, who deserve no higher regard than
the brigands of portions of the Old World. Encouragement,
direct or indirect, to these insurrectos
stands on the same footing as encouragement to hostile
Indians in the days when we still had Indian
wars. Exactly as our aim is to give to the Indian
who remains peaceful the fullest and amplest consideration,
but to have it understood that we will show
no weakness if he goes on the warpath, so we must
make it evident, unless we are false to our own traditions
and to the demands of civilization and humanity,
that while we will do everything in our
power for the Filipino who is peaceful, we will take
the sternest measures with the Filipino who follows
the path of the insurrecto and the ladrone.
The heartiest praise is due to large numbers of the
natives of the islands for their steadfast loyalty.
The Macabebes have been conspicuous for their courage
and devotion to the flag. I recommend that the
Secretary of War be empowered to take some systematic
action in the way of aiding those of these men
who are crippled in the service and the families of
those who are killed.
The time has come when there should be additional
legislation for the Philippines. Nothing better
can be done for the islands than to introduce industrial
enterprises. Nothing would benefit them so
much as throwing them open to industrial development.
The connection between idleness and mischief
is proverbial, and the opportunity to do remunerative
work is one of the surest preventives of war. Of
course no business man will go into the Philippines
unless it is to his interest to do so, and it is immensely
to the interest of the islands that he should
go in. It is therefore necessary that the Congress
should pass laws by which the resources of the islands
can be developed; so that franchises (for limited
terms of years) can be granted to companies
doing business in them, and every encouragement be
given to the incoming of business men of every kind.
Not to permit this is to do a wrong to the Philippines.
The franchises must be granted and the business
permitted only under regulations which will
guarantee the islands against any kind of improper
exploitation. But the vast natural wealth of the islands
must be developed, and the capital willing to
develop it must be given the opportunity. The field
must be thrown open to individual enterprise, which
has been the real factor in the development of every
region over which our flag has flown. It is urgently
necessary to enact suitable laws dealing with general
transportation, mining, banking, currency, homesteads,
and the use and ownership of the lands and
timber. These laws will give free play to industrial
enterprise; and the commercial development which
will surely follow will afford to the people of the islands
the best proofs of the sincerity of our desire to
aid them.
I call your attention most earnestly to the crying
need of a cable to Hawaii and the Philippines, to be
continued from the Philippines to points in Asia.
We should not defer a day longer than necessary the
construction of such a cable. It is demanded not
merely for commercial but for political and military
considerations.
Either the Congress should immediately provide
for the construction of a government cable, or else
an arrangement should be made by which like advantages
to those accruing from a government cable
may be secured to the Government by contract with
a private cable company.
No single great material work which remains to
be undertaken on this continent is of such consequence
to the American people as the building of a
canal across the Isthmus connecting North and
South America. Its importance to the Nation is by
no means limited merely to its material effects upon
our business prosperity; and yet with view to these
effects alone it would be to the last degree important
for us immediately to begin it. While its beneficial
effects would perhaps be most marked upon the Pacific
Coast and the Gulf and South Atlantic States,
it would also greatly benefit other sections. It is
emphatically a work which it is for the interest of
the entire country to begin and complete as soon as
possible; it is one of those great works which only a
great nation can undertake with prospects of success,
and which when done are not only permanent
assets in the nation’s material interests, but standing
monuments to its constructive ability.
I am glad to be able to announce to you that our
negotiations on this subject with Great Britain, conducted
on both sides in a spirit of friendliness and
mutual good-will and respect, have resulted in my
being able to lay before the Senate a treaty which
if ratified will enable us to begin preparations for an
Isthmian Canal at any time, and which guarantees to
this Nation every right that it has ever asked in connection
with the canal. In this treaty, the old Clayton-Bulwer
treaty, so long recognized as inadequate
to supply the base for the construction and maintenance
of a necessarily American ship canal, is
abrogated. It specifically provides that the United
States alone shall do the work of building and assume
the responsibility of safeguarding the canal and
shall regulate its neutral use by all nations on terms
of equality without the guarantee or interference
of any outside nation from any quarter. The signed
treaty will at once be laid before the Senate, and if
approved the Congress can then proceed to give effect
to the advantages it secures us by providing for
the building of the canal.
The true end of every great and free people should
be self-respecting peace; and this Nation most earnestly
desires sincere and cordial friendship with all
others. Over the entire world, of recent years, wars
between the great civilized powers have become less
and less frequent. Wars with barbarous or semi-barbarous
peoples come in an entirely different category,
being merely a most regrettable but necessary
international police duty which must be performed
for the sake of the welfare of mankind. Peace can
only be kept with certainty where both sides wish to
keep it; but more and more the civilized peoples are
realizing the wicked folly of war and are attaining
that condition of just and intelligent regard for the
rights of others which will in the end, as we hope
and believe, make world-wide peace possible. The
peace conference at The Hague gave definite expression
to this hope and belief and marked a stride
toward their attainment.
This same peace conference acquiesced in our
statement of the Monroe Doctrine as compatible with
the purposes and aims of the conference.
The Monroe Doctrine should be the cardinal feature
of the foreign policy of all the nations of the
two Americas, as it is of the United States. Just
seventy-eight years have passed since President
Monroe in his Annual Message announced that “The
American continents are henceforth not to be considered
as subjects for future colonization by any
European power.” In other words, the Monroe
Doctrine is a declaration that there must be no
territorial aggrandizement by any non-American
power at the expense of any American power on
American soil. It is in no wise intended as hostile
to any nation in the Old World. Still less is it intended
to give cover to any aggression by one New
World power at the expense of any other. It is simply
a step, and a long step, toward assuring the universal
peace of the world by securing the possibility
of permanent peace on this hemisphere.
During the past century other influences have established
the permanence and independence of the
smaller states of Europe. Through the Monroe Doctrine
we hope to be able to safeguard like independence
and secure like permanence for the lesser
among the New World nations.
This doctrine has nothing to do with the commercial
relations of any American power, save that
it in truth allows each of them to form such as it
desires. In other words, it is really a guaranty of
the commercial independence of the Americas. We
do not ask under this doctrine for any exclusive commercial
dealings with any other American state.
We do not guarantee any state against punishment
if it misconducts itself, provided that punishment
does not take the form of the acquisition of territory
by any non-American power.
Our attitude in Cuba is a sufficient guaranty of
our own good faith. We have not the slightest desire
to secure any territory at the expense of any
of our neighbors. We wish to work with them hand
in hand, so that all of us may be uplifted together,
and we rejoice over the good fortune of any of them,
we gladly hail their material prosperity and political
stability, and are concerned and alarmed if any
of them fall into industrial or political chaos. We
do not wish to see any Old World military power
grow up on this continent, or to be compelled to become
a military power ourselves. The peoples of the
Americas can prosper best if left to work out their
own salvation in their own way.
The work of upbuilding the navy must be steadily
continued. No one point of our policy, foreign or
domestic, is more important than this to the honor
and material welfare, and above all to the peace,
of our Nation in the future. Whether we desire it
or not, we must henceforth recognize that we have
international duties no less than international rights.
Even if our flag were hauled down in the Philippines
and Porto Rico, even if we decided not to
build the Isthmian Canal, we should need a thoroughly
trained navy of adequate size, or else be
prepared definitely and for all time to abandon the
idea that our Nation is among those whose sons go
down to the sea in ships. Unless our commerce is
always to be carried in foreign bottoms, we must
have war craft to protect it.
Inasmuch, however, as the American people have
no thought of abandoning the path upon which they
have entered, and especially in view of the fact that
the building of the Isthmian Canal is fast becoming
one of the matters which the whole people are united
in demanding, it is imperative that our navy should
be put and kept in the highest state of efficiency, and
should be made to answer to our growing needs. So
far from being in any way a provocation to war, an
adequate and highly trained navy is the best guaranty
against war, the cheapest and most effective peace
insurance. The cost of building and maintaining
such a navy represents the very lightest premium
for insuring peace which this nation can possibly pay.
Probably no other great nation in the world is so
anxious for peace as we are. There is not a single
civilized power which has anything whatever to fear
from aggressiveness on our part. All we want is
peace; and toward this end we wish to be able to
secure the same respect for our rights from others
which we are eager and anxious to extend to their
rights in return, to insure fair treatment to us commercially,
and to guarantee the safety of the American
people.
Our people intend to abide by the Monroe Doctrine
and to insist upon it as the one sure means of
securing the peace of the Western Hemisphere. The
navy offers us the only means of making our insistence
upon the Monroe Doctrine anything but a
subject of derision to whatever nation chooses to
disregard it. We desire the peace which comes as
of right to the just man armed; not the peace granted
on terms of ignominy to the craven and the weakling.
It is not possible to improvise a navy after war
breaks out. The ships must be built and the men
trained long in advance. Some auxiliary vessels can
be turned into makeshifts which will do in default of
any better for the minor work, and a proportion of
raw men can be mixed with the highly trained, their
shortcomings being made good by the skill of their
fellows; but the efficient fighting force of the navy
when pitted against an equal opponent will be found
almost exclusively in the warships that have been
regularly built and in the officers and men who
through years of faithful performance of sea duty
have been trained to handle their formidable but complex
and delicate weapons with the highest efficiency.
In the late war with Spain the ships that dealt the
decisive blows at Manila and Santiago had been
launched from two to fourteen years, and they were
able to do as they did because the men in the conning
towers, the gun-turrets, and the engine-rooms had
through long years of practice at sea learned how to
do their duty.
Our present navy was begun in 1882. At that
period our navy consisted of a collection of antiquated
wooden ships, already almost as out of place
against modern war vessels as the galleys of Alcibiades
and Hamilcar—certainly as the ships of
Tromp and Blake. Nor at that time did we have
men fit to handle a modern man-of-war. Under the
wise legislation of the Congress and the successful
administration of a succession of patriotic Secretaries
of the Navy, belonging to both political parties,
the work of upbuilding the navy went on, and ships
equal to any in the world of their kind were continually
added; and what was even more important,
these ships were exercised at sea singly and in squadrons
until the men aboard them were able to get the
best possible service out of them. The result was
seen in the short war with Spain, which was decided
with such rapidity because of the infinitely greater
preparedness of our navy than of the Spanish navy.
While awarding the fullest honor to the men who
actually commanded and manned the ships which
destroyed the Spanish sea forces in the Philippines
and in Cuba, we must not forget that an equal
meed of praise belongs to those without whom
neither blow could have been struck. The Congressmen
who voted years in advance the money to lay
down the ships, to build the guns, to buy the armor plate;
the Department officials and the business men
and wage-workers who furnished what the Congress
had authorized; the Secretaries of the Navy who
asked for and expended the appropriations; and finally
the officers who, in fair weather and foul, on actual
sea service, trained and disciplined the crews of the
ships when there was no war in sight—all are entitled
to a full share in the glory of Manila and Santiago,
and the respect accorded by every true American
to those who wrought such signal triumph for
our country. It was forethought and preparation
which secured us the overwhelming triumph of
1898. If we fail to show forethought and preparation
now, there may come a time when disaster will
befall us instead of triumph; and should this time
come, the fault will rest primarily, not upon those
whom the accident of events puts in supreme command
at the moment, but upon those who have
failed to prepare in advance.
There should be no cessation in the work of completing
our navy. So far ingenuity has been wholly
unable to devise a substitute for the great war craft
whose hammering guns beat out the mastery of the
high seas. It is unsafe and unwise not to provide
this year for several additional battleships and
heavy armored cruisers, with auxiliary and lighter
craft in proportion; for the exact numbers and character
I refer you to the report of the Secretary of
the Navy. But there is something we need even
more than additional ships, and this is additional
officers and men. To provide battleships and cruisers
and then lay them up, with the expectation of
leaving them unmanned until they are needed in
actual war, would be worse than folly; it would be
a crime against the nation.
To send any warship against a competent enemy
unless those aboard it have been trained by years
of actual sea service, including incessant gunnery
practice, would be to invite not merely disaster, but
the bitterest shame and humiliation. Four thousand
additional seamen and one thousand additional marines
should be provided; and an increase in the
officers should be provided by making a large addition
to the classes at Annapolis. There is one
small matter which should be mentioned in connection
with Annapolis. The pretentious and unmeaning
title of “naval cadet” should be abolished; the
title of “midshipman,” full of historic association,
should be restored.
Even in time of peace a warship should be used
until it wears out, for only so can it be kept fit to
respond to any emergency. The officers and men
alike should be kept as much as possible on blue
water, for it is there only they can learn their duties
as they should be learned. The big vessels should
be manœuvred in squadrons containing not merely
battleships, but the necessary proportion of cruisers
and scouts. The torpedo boats should be handled
by the younger officers in such manner as will best
fit the latter to take responsibility and meet the
emergencies of actual warfare.
Every detail ashore which can be performed by
a civilian should be so performed, the officer being
kept for his special duty in the sea service. Above
all, gunnery practice should be unceasing. It is important
to have our navy of adequate size, but it
is even more important that ship for ship it should
equal in efficiency any navy in the world. This is
possible only with highly drilled crews and officers,
and this in turn imperatively demands continuous
and progressive instruction in target practice, ship
handling, squadron tactics, and general discipline.
Our ships must be assembled in squadrons actively
cruising away from harbors and never long at anchor.
The resulting wear upon engines and hulls
must be endured; a battleship worn out in long
training of officers and men is well paid for by the
results, while, on the other hand, no matter in how
excellent condition, it is useless if the crew be not
expert.
We now have seventeen battleships appropriated
for, of which nine are completed and have been commissioned
for actual service. The remaining eight
will be ready in from two to four years, but it will
take at least that time to recruit and train the men
to fight them. It is of vast concern that we have
trained crews ready for the vessels by the time they
are commissioned. Good ships and good guns are
simply good weapons, and the best weapons are
useless save in the hands of men who know how to
fight with them. The men must be trained and
drilled under a thorough and well-planned system of
progressive instruction, while the recruiting must
be carried on with still greater vigor. Every effort
must be made to exalt the main function of the officer—the
command of men. The leading graduates
of the Naval Academy should be assigned to the
combatant branches, the line and marines.
Many of the essentials of success are already recognized
by the General Board, which, as the central
office of a growing staff, is moving steadily toward
a proper war efficiency and a proper efficiency of the
whole Navy, under the Secretary. This General
Board, by fostering the creation of a general staff,
is providing for the official and then the general
recognition of our altered conditions as a nation
and of the true meaning of a great war fleet, which
meaning is, first, the best men, and, second, the best
ships.
The Naval Militia forces are State organizations,
and are trained for coast service, and in event of
war they will constitute the inner line of defence.
They should receive hearty encouragement from the
General Government.
But in addition we should at once provide for a
National Naval Reserve, organized and trained
under the direction of the Navy Department, and
subject to the call of the Chief Executive whenever
war becomes imminent. It should be a real auxiliary
to the naval seagoing peace establishment, and
offer material to be drawn on at once for manning
our ships in time of war. It should be composed
of graduates of the Naval Academy, graduates of
the Naval Militia, officers and crews of coast-line
steamers, longshore schooners, fishing vessels, and
steam yachts, together with the coast population
about such centres as life-saving stations and light-houses.
The American people must either build and maintain
an adequate navy or else make up their minds
definitely to accept a secondary position in international
affairs, not merely in political, but in commercial,
matters. It has been well said that there is
no surer way of courting national disaster than to
be “opulent, aggressive, and unarmed.”
It is not necessary to increase our army beyond
its present size at this time. But it is necessary to
keep it at the highest point of efficiency. The individual
units who as officers and enlisted men compose
this army, are, we have good reason to believe,
at least as efficient as those of any other army in the
entire world. It is our duty to see that their training
is of a kind to insure the highest possible expression
of power to these units when acting in
combination.
The conditions of modern war are such as to make
an infinitely heavier demand than ever before upon
the individual character and capacity of the officer
and the enlisted man, and to make it far more difficult
for men to act together with effect. At present
the fighting must be done in extended order, which
means that each man must act for himself and at the
same time act in combination with others with whom
he is no longer in the old-fashioned elbow-to-elbow
touch. Under such conditions a few men of the highest
excellence are worth more than many men without
the special skill which is only found as the result
of special training applied to men of exceptional physique
and morale. But nowadays the most valuable
fighting man and the most difficult to perfect is the
rifleman who is also a skilful and daring rider.
The proportion of our cavalry regiments has
wisely been increased. The American cavalryman,
trained to manœuvre and fight with equal
facility on foot and on horseback, is the best type of
soldier for general purposes now to be found in the
world. The ideal cavalryman of the present day
is a man who can fight on foot as effectively as the
best infantryman, and who is in addition unsurpassed
in the care and management of his horse
and in his ability to fight on horseback.
A general staff should be created. As for the
present staff and supply departments, they should be
filled by details from the line, the men so detailed
returning after a while to their line duties. It is
very undesirable to have the senior grades of the
army composed of men who have come to fill
the positions by the mere fact of seniority. A system
should be adopted by which there shall be an
elimination grade by grade of those who seem unfit
to render the best service in the next grade. Justice
to the veterans of the Civil War who are still in the
army would seem to require that in the matter of
retirements they be given by law the same privileges
accorded to their comrades in the navy.
The process of elimination of the least fit should
be conducted in a manner that would render it
practically impossible to apply political or social
pressure on behalf of any candidate, so that each
man may be judged purely on his own merits.
Pressure for the promotion of civil officials for
political reasons is bad enough, but it is tenfold
worse where applied on behalf of officers of the
army or navy. Every promotion and every detail
under the War Department must be made solely
with regard to the good of the service and to the
capacity and merit of the man himself. No pressure,
political, social, or personal, of any kind, will
be permitted to exercise the least effect in any question
of promotion or detail; and if there is reason
to believe that such pressure is exercised at the instigation
of the officer concerned, it will be held to
militate against him. In our army we can not
afford to have rewards or duties distributed save on
the simple ground that those who by their own
merits are entitled to the rewards get them, and that
those who are peculiarly fit to do the duties are
chosen to perform them.
Every effort should be made to bring the army to
a constantly increasing state of efficiency. When on
actual service no work save that directly in the line
of such service should be required. The paper work
in the army, as in the navy, should be greatly reduced.
What is needed is proved power of command
and capacity to work well in the field. Constant
care is necessary to prevent dry rot in the
transportation and commissary departments.
Our army is so small and so much scattered that
it is very difficult to give the higher officers (as well
as the lower officers and the enlisted men) a chance
to practice manœuvres in mass and on a comparatively
large scale. In time of need no amount of
individual excellence would avail against the paralysis
which would follow inability to work as a coherent
whole, under skilful and daring leadership.
The Congress should provide means whereby it will
be possible to have field exercises by at least a division
of regulars, and if possible also a division of
national guardsmen, once a year. These exercises
might take the form of field manœuvres; or, if on
the Gulf Coast or the Pacific or Atlantic Seaboard,
or in the region of the Great Lakes, the army corps
when assembled could be marched from some inland
point to some point on the water, there embarked,
disembarked after a couple of days’ journey at some
other point, and again marched inland. Only by
actual handling and providing for men in masses
while they are marching, camping, embarking, and
disembarking, will it be possible to train the higher
officers to perform their duties well and smoothly.
A great debt is owing from the public to the men
of the army and navy. They should be so treated
as to enable them to reach the highest point of efficiency,
so that they may be able to respond instantly
to any demand made upon them to sustain the interests
of the nation and the honor of the flag. The
individual American enlisted man is probably on
the whole a more formidable fighting man than the
regular of any other army. Every consideration
should be shown him, and in return the highest
standard of usefulness should be exacted from him.
It is well worth while for the Congress to consider
whether the pay of enlisted men upon second and
subsequent enlistments should not be increased to
correspond with the increased value of the veteran
soldier.
Much good has already come from the act reorganizing
the army, passed early in the present year.
The three prime reforms, all of them of literally inestimable
value, are, first, the substitution of four-year
details from the line for permanent appointments
in the so-called staff divisions; second, the
establishment of a corps of artillery with a chief
at the head; third, the establishment of a maximum
and minimum limit for the army. It would be difficult
to overestimate the improvement in the efficiency
of our army which these three reforms are
making, and have in part already effected.
The reorganization provided for by the act has
been substantially accomplished. The improved conditions
in the Philippines have enabled the War Department
materially to reduce the military charge
upon our revenue and to arrange the number of soldiers
so as to bring this number much nearer to
the minimum than to the maximum limit established
by law. There is, however, need of supplementary
legislation. Thorough military education
must be provided, and in addition to the regulars
the advantages of this education should be given
to the officers of the National Guard and others in
civil life who desire intelligently to fit themselves
for possible military duty. The officers should be
given the chance to perfect themselves by study in
the higher branches of this art. At West Point the
education should be of the kind most apt to turn
out men who are good in actual field service; too
much stress should not be laid on mathematics, nor
should proficiency therein be held to establish the
right of entry to a corps d’élite. The typical American
officer of the best kind need not be a good mathematician;
but he must be able to master himself,
to control others, and to show boldness and fertility
of resource in every emergency.
Action should be taken in reference to the militia
and to the raising of volunteer forces. Our militia
law is obsolete and worthless. The organization and
armament of the National Guard of the several
States, which are treated as militia in the appropriations
by the Congress, should be made identical with
those provided for the regular forces. The obligations
and duties of the Guard in time of war should
be carefully defined, and a system established by law
under which the method of procedure of raising
volunteer forces should be prescribed in advance.
It is utterly impossible in the excitement and haste
of impending war to do this satisfactorily if the arrangements
have not been made long beforehand.
Provision should be made for utilizing in the first
volunteer organizations called out the training of
those citizens who have already had experience under
arms, and especially for the selection in advance of
the officers of any force which may be raised; for
careful selection of the kind necessary is impossible
after the outbreak of war.
That the army is not at all a mere instrument of
destruction has been shown during the last three
years. In the Philippines, Cuba, and Porto Rico
it has proved itself a great constructive force, a most
potent implement for the upbuilding of a peaceful
civilization.
No other citizens deserve so well of the Republic
as the veterans, the survivors of those who saved
the Union. They did the one deed which if left
undone would have meant that all else in our history
went for nothing. But for their steadfast prowess
in the greatest crisis of our history, all our annals
would be meaningless, and our great experiment in
popular freedom and self-government a gloomy failure.
Moreover, they not only left us a united nation,
but they left us also as a heritage the memory
of the mighty deeds by which the Nation was kept
united. We are now indeed one nation, one in fact
as well as in name; we are united in our devotion to
the flag which is the symbol of national greatness
and unity; and the very completeness of our union
enables us all, in every part of the country, to glory
in the valor shown alike by the sons of the North
and the sons of the South in the times that tried
men’s souls.
The men who in the last three years have done
so well in the East and the West Indies and on the
mainland of Asia have shown that this remembrance
is not lost. In any serious crisis the United States
must rely for the great mass of its fighting men upon
the volunteer soldiery who do not make a permanent
profession of the military career; and whenever such
a crisis arises the deathless memories of the Civil
War will give to Americans the lift of lofty purpose
which comes to those whose fathers have stood
valiantly in the forefront of the battle.
The merit system of making appointments is in
its essence as democratic and American as the common
school system itself. It simply means that in
clerical and other positions where the duties are entirely
non-political, all applicants should have a fair
field and no favor, each standing on his merits as
he is able to show them by practical test. Written
competitive examinations offer the only available
means in many cases for applying this system. In
other cases, as where laborers are employed, a system
of registration undoubtedly can be widely extended.
There are, of course, places where the written
competitive examination can not be applied, and
others where it offers by no means an ideal solution,
but where under existing political conditions it is,
though an imperfect means, yet the best present
means of getting satisfactory results.
Wherever the conditions have permitted the application
of the merit system in its fullest and widest
sense, the gain to the government has been immense.
The navy yards and postal service illustrate, probably
better than any other branches of the government,
the great gain in economy, efficiency, and honesty
due to the enforcement of this principle.
I recommend the passage of a law which will extend
the classified service to the District of Columbia,
or will at least enable the President thus to
extend it. In my judgment all laws providing for
the temporary employment of clerks should hereafter
contain a provision that they be selected under
the Civil Service Law.
It is important to have this system obtain at home,
but it is even more important to have it applied
rigidly in our insular possessions. Not an office
should be filled in the Philippines or Porto Rico with
any regard to the man’s partisan affiliations or services,
with any regard to the political, social, or
personal influence which he may have at his command;
in short, heed should be paid to absolutely
nothing save the man’s own character and capacity
and the needs of the service.
The administration of these islands should be as
wholly free from the suspicion of partisan politics
as the administration of the army and navy. All
that we ask from the public servant in the Philippines
or Porto Rico is that he reflect honor on his
country by the way in which he makes that country’s
rule a benefit to the peoples who have come under
it. This is all that we should ask, and we can not
afford to be content with less.
The merit system is simply one method of securing
honest and efficient administration of the government;
and in the long run the sole justification
of any type of government lies in its proving itself
both honest and efficient.
The consular service is now organized under the
provisions of a law passed in 1856, which is entirely
inadequate to existing conditions. The interest
shown by so many commercial bodies throughout
the country in the reorganization of the service is
heartily commended to your attention. Several bills
providing for a new consular service have in recent
years been submitted to the Congress. They are
based upon the just principle that appointments to
the service should be made only after a practical
test of the applicant’s fitness, that promotions should
be governed by trustworthiness, adaptability, and
zeal in the performance of duty, and that the tenure
of office should be unaffected by partisan considerations.
The guardianship and fostering of our rapidly
expanding foreign commerce, the protection of
American citizens resorting to foreign countries in
lawful pursuit of their affairs, and the maintenance
of the dignity of the Nation abroad, combine to make
it essential that our consuls should be men of character,
knowledge, and enterprise. It is true that the
service is now, in the main, efficient, but a standard
of excellence can not be permanently maintained until
the principles set forth in the bills heretofore
submitted to the Congress on this subject are enacted
into law.
In my judgment the time has arrived when we
should definitely make up our minds to recognize the
Indian as an individual and not as a member of a
tribe. The General Allotment Act is a mighty pulverizing
engine to break up the tribal mass. It acts
directly upon the family and the individual. Under
its provisions some sixty thousand Indians have already
become citizens of the United States. We
should now break up the tribal funds, doing for
them what allotment does for the tribal lands; that
is, they should be divided into individual holdings.
There will be a transition period during which the
funds will in many cases have to be held in trust.
This is the case also with the lands. A stop should
be put upon the indiscriminate permission to Indians
to lease their allotments. The effort should be steadily
to make the Indian work like any other man on
his own ground. The marriage laws of the Indians
should be made the same as those of the whites.
In the schools the education should be elementary
and largely industrial. The need of higher education
among the Indians is very, very limited. On
the reservations care should be taken to try to suit
the teaching to the needs of the particular Indian.
There is no use in attempting to induce agriculture in
a country suited only for cattle raising, where the
Indian should be made a stock grower. The ration
system, which is merely the corral and the reservation
system, is highly detrimental to the Indians. It
promotes beggary, perpetuates pauperism, and stifles
industry. It is an effectual barrier to progress. It
must continue to a greater or less degree as long
as tribes are herded on reservations and have everything
in common. The Indian should be treated as
an individual—like the white man. During the
change of treatment inevitable hardships will occur;
every effort should be made to minimize these hardships;
but we should not because of them hesitate
to make the change. There should be a continuous
reduction in the number of agencies.
In dealing with the aboriginal races few things are
more important than to preserve them from the terrible
physical and moral degradation resulting from
the liquor traffic. We are doing all we can to save
our own Indian tribes from this evil. Wherever by
international agreement this same end can be attained
as regards races where we do not possess
exclusive control, every effort should be made to
bring it about.
I bespeak the most cordial support from the Congress
and the people for the St. Louis Exposition to
Commemorate the One Hundredth Anniversary of
the Louisiana Purchase. This purchase was the
greatest instance of expansion in our history. It
definitely decided that we were to become a great
continental republic, by far the foremost power in the
Western Hemisphere. It is one of three or four great
landmarks in our history—the great turning-points
in our development. It is eminently fitting that all
our people should join with heartiest good will in
commemorating it, and the citizens of St. Louis, of
Missouri, of all the adjacent region, are entitled to
every aid in making the celebration a noteworthy
event in our annals. We earnestly hope that foreign
nations will appreciate the deep interest our
country takes in this Exposition, and our view of its
importance from every standpoint, and that they
will participate in securing its success. The National
Government should be represented by a full
and complete set of exhibits.
The people of Charleston, with great energy and
civic spirit, are carrying on an Exposition which
will continue throughout most of the present session
of the Congress. I heartily commend this Exposition
to the good will of the people. It deserves all
the encouragement that can be given it. The managers
of the Charleston Exposition have requested
the Cabinet officers to place thereat the government
exhibits which have been at Buffalo, promising to
pay the necessary expenses. I have taken the responsibility
of directing that this be done, for I feel
that it is due to Charleston to help her in her praiseworthy
effort. In my opinion the management
should not be required to pay all these expenses. I
earnestly recommend that the Congress appropriate
at once the small sum necessary for this purpose.
The Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo has just
closed. Both from the industrial and the artistic
standpoint this Exposition has been in a high degree
creditable and useful, not merely to Buffalo but
to the United States. The terrible tragedy of the
President’s assassination interfered materially with
its being a financial success. The Exposition was peculiarly
in harmony with the trend of our public
policy, because it represented an effort to bring into
closer touch all the peoples of the Western Hemisphere,
and give them an increasing sense of unity.
Such an effort was a genuine service to the entire
American public.
The advancement of the highest interests of national
science and learning and the custody of objects
of art and of the valuable results of scientific
expeditions conducted by the United States have
been committed to the Smithsonian Institution. In
furtherance of its declared purpose—for the “increase
and diffusion of knowledge among men”—the
Congress has from time to time given it other
important functions. Such trusts have been executed
by the Institution with notable fidelity. There
should be no halt in the work of the Institution, in
accordance with the plans which its Secretary has
presented, for the preservation of the vanishing races
of great North American animals in the National
Zoölogical Park. The urgent needs of the National
Museum are recommended to the favorable consideration
of the Congress.
Perhaps the most characteristic educational movement
of the past fifty years is that which has created
the modern public library and developed it into broad
and active service. There are now over five thousand
public libraries in the United States, the product
of this period. In addition to accumulating material,
they are also striving by organization, by
improvement in method, and by co-operation, to give
greater efficiency to the material they hold, to make
it more widely useful, and by avoidance of unnecessary
duplication in process to reduce the cost of its
administration.
In these efforts they naturally look for assistance
to the Federal library, which, though still the Library
of Congress, and so entitled, is the one national
library of the United States. Already the largest
single collection of books on the Western Hemisphere,
and certain to increase more rapidly than
any other through purchase, exchange, and the operation
of the copyright law, this library has a unique
opportunity to render to the libraries of this country—to
American scholarship—service of the highest
importance. It is housed in a building which is
the largest and most magnificent yet erected for library
uses. Resources are now being provided which
will develop the collection properly, equip it with the
apparatus and service necessary to its effective use,
render its bibliographic work widely available, and
enable it to become, not merely a centre of research,
but the chief factor in great co-operative efforts for
the diffusion of knowledge and the advancement of
learning.
For the sake of good administration, sound economy,
and the advancement of science, the Census
Office as now constituted should be made a permanent
government bureau. This would insure better,
cheaper, and more satisfactory work, in the interest
not only of our business but of statistic, economic,
and social science.
The remarkable growth of the postal service is
shown in the fact that its revenues have doubled and
its expenditures have nearly doubled within twelve
years. Its progressive development compels constantly
increasing outlay, but in this period of business
energy and prosperity its receipts grow so much
faster than its expenses that the annual deficit has
been steadily reduced from $11,411,779 in 1897 to
$3,923,727 in 1901. Among recent postal advances
the success of rural free-delivery wherever established
has been so marked, and actual experience has
made its benefits so plain, that the demand for its
extension is general and urgent.
It is just that the great agricultural population
should share in the improvement of the service. The
number of rural routes now in operation is 6,009,
practically all established within three years, and
there are 6,000 applications awaiting action. It is
expected that the number in operation at the close
of the current fiscal year will reach 8,600. The mail
will then be daily carried to the doors of 5,700,000
of our people who have heretofore been dependent
upon distant offices, and one-third of all that portion
of the country which is adapted to it will be covered
by this kind of service.
The full measure of postal progress which might
be realized has long been hampered and obstructed
by the heavy burden imposed on the Government
through the intrenched and well-understood abuses
which have grown up in connection with second-class
mail matter. The extent of this burden appears when
it is stated that while the second-class matter makes
nearly three-fifths of the weight of all the mail, it
paid for the last fiscal year only $4,294,445 of the
aggregate postal revenue of $111,631,193. If the
pound rate of postage, which produces the large loss
thus entailed, and which was fixed by the Congress
with the purpose of encouraging the dissemination
of public information, were limited to the legitimate
newspapers and periodicals actually contemplated by
the law, no just exception could be taken. That expense
would be the recognized and accepted cost of
a liberal public policy deliberately adopted for a justifiable
end. But much of the matter which enjoys
the privileged rate is wholly outside of the intent of
the law, and has secured admission only through an
evasion of its requirements or through lax construction.
The proportion of such wrongly included matter
is estimated by postal experts to be one-half of
the whole volume of second-class mail. If it be only
one-third or one-quarter, the magnitude of the burden
is apparent. The Post-Office Department has
now undertaken to remove the abuses so far as is
possible by a stricter application of the law; and it
should be sustained in its effort.
Owing to the rapid growth of our power and our
interests on the Pacific, whatever happens in China
must be of the keenest national concern to us.
The general terms of the settlement of the questions
growing out of the anti-foreign uprisings in
China of 1900, having been formulated in a joint
note addressed to China by the representatives of
the injured powers in December last, were promptly
accepted by the Chinese Government. After protracted
conferences the plenipotentiaries of the
several powers were able to sign a final protocol
with the Chinese plenipotentiaries on the 7th of last
September, setting forth the measures taken by
China in compliance with the demands of the joint
note, and expressing their satisfaction therewith.
It will be laid before the Congress, with a report of
the plenipotentiary on behalf of the United States,
Mr. William Woodville Rockhill, to whom high
praise is due for the tact, good judgment, and energy
he has displayed in performing an exceptionally
difficult and delicate task.
The agreement reached disposes in a manner satisfactory
to the powers of the various grounds of
complaint, and will contribute materially to better
future relations between China and the powers.
Reparation has been made by China for the murder
of foreigners during the uprising and punishment
has been inflicted on the officials, however high in
rank, recognized as responsible for or having participated
in the outbreak. Official examinations
have been forbidden for a period of five years in
all cities in which foreigners have been murdered or
cruelly treated, and edicts have been issued making
all officials directly responsible for the future safety
of foreigners and for the suppression of violence
against them.
Provisions have been made for ensuring the future
safety of the foreign representatives in Pekin by
setting aside for their exclusive use a quarter of the
city which the powers can make defensible and in
which they can if necessary maintain permanent
military guards; by dismantling the military works
between the capital and the sea; and by allowing the
temporary maintenance of foreign military posts
along this line. An edict has been issued by the
Emperor of China prohibiting for two years the importation
of arms and ammunition into China.
China has agreed to pay adequate indemnities to the
states, societies, and individuals for the losses sustained
by them and for the expenses of the military
expeditions sent by the various powers to protect
life and restore order.
Under the provisions of the joint note of December,
1900, China has agreed to revise the treaties
of commerce and navigation and to take such other
steps for the purpose of facilitating foreign trade as
the foreign powers may decide to be needed.
The Chinese Government has agreed to participate
financially in the work of bettering the water
approaches to Shanghai and to Tien-tsin, the centres
of foreign trade in central and northern China, and
an international conservancy board, in which the
Chinese Government is largely represented, has been
provided for the improvement of the Shanghai
River and the control of its navigation. In the
same line of commercial advantages a revision of the
present tariff on imports has been assented to for the
purpose of substituting specific for ad valorem duties,
and an expert has been sent abroad on the part of
the United States to assist in this work. A list of
articles to remain free of duty, including flour,
cereals, and rice, gold and silver coin and bullion,
has also been agreed upon in the settlement.
During these troubles our Government has unswervingly
advocated moderation, and has materially
aided in bringing about an adjustment
which tends to enhance the welfare of China and
to lead to a more beneficial intercourse between the
Empire and the modern world; while in the critical
period of revolt and massacre we did our full share
in safeguarding life and property, restoring order,
and vindicating the national interest and honor. It
behooves us to continue in these paths, doing what
lies in our power to foster feelings of good will,
and leaving no effort untried to work out the great
policy of full and fair intercourse between China
and the nations, on a footing of equal rights and advantages
to all. We advocate the “open door” with
all that it implies; not merely the procurement of
enlarged commercial opportunities on the coasts,
but access to the interior by the waterways with
which China has been so extraordinarily favored.
Only by bringing the people of China into peaceful
and friendly community of trade with all the peoples
of the earth can the work now auspiciously begun
be carried to fruition. In the attainment of this
purpose we necessarily claim parity of treatment,
under the conventions, throughout the Empire for
our trade and our citizens with those of all other
powers.
We view with lively interest and keen hopes of
beneficial results the proceedings of the Pan-American
Congress, convoked at the invitation of Mexico,
and now sitting at the Mexican capital. The delegates
of the United States are under the most liberal
instructions to co-operate with their colleagues in
all matters promising advantage to the great family
of American commonwealths, as well in their relations
among themselves as in their domestic advancement
and in their intercourse with the world
at large.
My predecessor communicated to the Congress
the fact that the Weil and La Abra awards against
Mexico have been adjudged by the highest courts
of our country to have been obtained through fraud
and perjury on the part of the claimants, and that
in accordance with the acts of the Congress the
money remaining in the hands of the Secretary of
State on these awards has been returned to Mexico.
A considerable portion of the money received from
Mexico on these awards had been paid by this Government
to the claimants before the decision of the
courts was rendered. My judgment is that the
Congress should return to Mexico an amount equal
to the sums thus already paid to the claimants.
The death of Queen Victoria caused the people
of the United States deep and heartfelt sorrow, to
which the Government gave full expression. When
President McKinley died, our nation in turn received
from every quarter of the British Empire
expressions of grief and sympathy no less sincere.
The death of the Empress Dowager Frederick of
Germany also aroused the genuine sympathy of the
American people; and this sympathy was cordially
reciprocated by Germany when the President was
assassinated. Indeed, from every quarter of the
civilized world we received, at the time of the President’s
death, assurances of such grief and regard as
to touch the hearts of our people. In the midst of
our affliction we reverently thank the Almighty
that we are at peace with the nations of mankind;
and we firmly intend that our policy shall be such
as to continue unbroken these international relations
of mutual respect and good will.
Theodore Roosevelt.
White House,
December 3, 1901.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
We still continue in a period of unbounded prosperity.
This prosperity is not the creature of law,
but undoubtedly the laws under which we work
have been instrumental in creating the conditions
which made it possible, and by unwise legislation it
would be easy enough to destroy it. There will undoubtedly
be periods of depression. The wave will
recede; but the tide will advance. This nation is
seated on a continent flanked by two great oceans.
It is composed of men the descendants of pioneers,
or, in a sense, pioneers themselves; of men winnowed
out from among the nations of the Old World
by the energy, boldness, and love of adventure found
in their own eager hearts. Such a nation, so placed,
will surely wrest success from fortune.
As a people we have played a large part in the
world, and we are bent upon making our future
even larger than the past. In particular, the events
of the last four years have definitely decided that,
for woe or for weal, our place must be great among
the nations. We may either fail greatly or succeed
greatly; but we can not avoid the endeavor from
which either great failure or great success must
come. Even if we would, we can not play a small
part. If we should try, all that would follow would
be that we should play a large part ignobly and
shamefully.
But our people, the sons of the men of the Civil
War, the sons of the men who had iron in their
blood, rejoice in the present and face the future
high of heart and resolute of will. Ours is not the
creed of the weakling and the coward; ours is the
gospel of hope and of triumphant endeavor. We
do not shrink from the struggle before us. There
are many problems for us to face at the outset of
the twentieth century—grave problems abroad and
still graver at home; but we know that we can solve
them and solve them well, provided only that we
bring to the solution the qualities of head and heart
which were shown by the men who, in the days
of Washington, founded this government, and, in
the days of Lincoln, preserved it.
No country has ever occupied a higher plane of
material well-being than ours at the present moment.
This well-being is due to no sudden or accidental
causes, but to the play of the economic forces
in this country for over a century; to our laws, our
sustained and continuous policies; above all, to the
high individual average of our citizenship. Great
fortunes have been won by those who have taken
the lead in this phenomenal industrial development,
and most of these fortunes have been won, not by
doing evil, but as an incident to action which has
benefited the community as a whole. Never before
has material well-being been so widely diffused
among our people. Great fortunes have been accumulated,
and yet in the aggregate these fortunes
are small indeed when compared to the wealth of
the people as a whole. The plain people are better
off than they have ever been before. The insurance
companies, which are practically mutual benefit societies—especially
helpful to men of moderate means—represent
accumulations of capital which are
among the largest in this country. There are more
deposits in the savings banks, more owners of farms,
more well-paid wage-workers in this country now
than ever before in our history. Of course, when
the conditions have favored the growth of so much
that was good, they have also favored somewhat the
growth of what was evil. It is eminently necessary
that we should endeavor to cut out this evil, but let
us keep a due sense of proportion; let us not in fixing
our gaze upon the lesser evil forget the greater
good. The evils are real and some of them are
menacing, but they are the outgrowth, not of misery
or decadence, but of prosperity—of the progress of
our gigantic industrial development. This industrial
development must not be checked, but side by
side with it should go such progressive regulation
as will diminish the evils. We should fail in our
duty if we did not try to remedy the evils, but we
shall succeed only if we proceed patiently, with
practical common-sense as well as resolution, separating
the good from the bad and holding on to the
former while endeavoring to get rid of the latter.
In my Message to the present Congress at its first
session I discussed at length the question of the
regulation of those big corporations commonly doing
an interstate business, often with some tendency to
monopoly, which are popularly known as trusts.
The experience of the past year has emphasized, in
my opinion, the desirability of the steps I then proposed.
A fundamental requisite of social efficiency
is a high standard of individual energy and excellence;
but this is in no wise inconsistent with power
to act in combination for aims which can not so well
be achieved by the individual acting alone. A fundamental
base of civilization is the inviolability of
property; but this is in no wise inconsistent with the
right of society to regulate the exercise of the artificial
powers which it confers upon the owners of
property, under the name of corporate franchises,
in such a way as to prevent the misuse of these
powers. Corporations, and especially combinations
of corporations, should be managed under public
regulation. Experience has shown that under our
system of government the necessary supervision can
not be obtained by State action. It must therefore
be achieved by national action. Our aim is not to
do away with corporations; on the contrary, these
big aggregations are an inevitable development of
modern industrialism, and the effort to destroy them
would be futile unless accomplished in ways that
would work the utmost mischief to the entire body
politic. We can do nothing of good in the way of
regulating and supervising these corporations until
we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking
the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with
any evil in them. We are not hostile to them;
we are merely determined that they shall be so
handled as to subserve the public good. We draw
the line against misconduct, not against wealth. The
capitalist who, alone or in conjunction with his fellows,
performs some great industrial feat by which
he wins money is a welldoer, not a wrongdoer, provided
only he works in proper and legitimate lines.
We wish to favor such a man when he does well.
We wish to supervise and control his actions only
to prevent him from doing ill. Publicity can do no
harm to the honest corporation; and we need not be
overtender about sparing the dishonest corporation.
In curbing and regulating the combinations of
capital which are or may become injurious to the
public we must be careful not to stop the great
enterprises which have legitimately reduced the cost
of production, not to abandon the place which our
country has won in the leadership of the international
industrial world, not to strike down wealth
with the result of closing factories and mines, of
turning the wage-worker idle in the streets and leaving
the farmer without a market for what he grows.
Insistence upon the impossible means delay in achieving
the possible, exactly as, on the other hand, the
stubborn defence alike of what is good and what
is bad in the existing system, the resolute effort to
obstruct any attempt at betterment, betrays blindness
to the historic truth that wise evolution is the sure
safeguard against revolution.
No more important subject can come before the
Congress than this of the regulation of interstate
business. This country can not afford to sit supine
on the plea that under our peculiar system of government
we are helpless in the presence of the new
conditions, and unable to grapple with them or to
cut out whatever of evil has arisen in connection
with them. The power of the Congress to regulate
interstate commerce is an absolute and unqualified
grant, and without limitations other than those prescribed
by the Constitution. The Congress has constituted
authority to make all laws necessary and
proper for executing this power, and I am satisfied
that this power has not been exhausted by any legislation
now on the statute books. It is evident, therefore,
that evils restrictive of commercial freedom
and entailing restraint upon national commerce fall
within the regulative power of the Congress, and
that a wise and reasonable law would be a necessary
and proper exercise of Congressional authority to the
end that such evils should be eradicated.
I believe that monopolies, unjust discriminations,
which prevent or cripple competition, fraudulent
overcapitalization, and other evils in trust organizations
and practices which injuriously affect interstate
trade can be prevented under the power of the Congress
to “regulate commerce with foreign nations
and among the several States” through regulations
and requirements operating directly upon such commerce,
the instrumentalities thereof, and those engaged
therein.
I earnestly recommend this subject to the consideration
of the Congress with a view to the passage
of a law reasonable in its provisions and effective
in its operations, upon which the questions
can be finally adjudicated that now raise doubts as to
the necessity of constitutional amendment. If it
prove impossible to accomplish the purposes above
set forth by such a law, then, assuredly, we should
not shrink from amending the Constitution so as
to secure beyond peradventure the power sought.
The Congress has not heretofore made any appropriation
for the better enforcement of the anti-trust
law as it now stands. Very much has been done
by the Department of Justice in securing the enforcement
of this law, but much more could be done
if the Congress would make a special appropriation
for this purpose, to be expended under the direction
of the Attorney-General.
One proposition advocated has been the reduction
of the tariff as a means of reaching the evils of the
trusts which fall within the category I have described.
Not merely would this be wholly ineffective,
but the diversion of our efforts in such a direction
would mean the abandonment of all intelligent
attempt to do away with these evils. Many of
the largest corporations, many of those which should
certainly be included in any proper scheme of regulation,
would not be affected in the slightest degree
by a change in the tariff, save as such change interfered
with the general prosperity of the country.
The only relation of the tariff to big corporations as
a whole is that the tariff makes manufactures profitable,
and the tariff remedy proposed would be in
effect simply to make manufactures unprofitable. To
remove the tariff as a punitive measure directed
against trusts would inevitably result in ruin to the
weaker competitors who are struggling against
them. Our aim should be not by unwise tariff
changes to give foreign products the advantage over
domestic products, but by proper regulation to give
domestic competition a fair chance; and this end
can not be reached by any tariff changes which
would affect unfavorably all domestic competitors,
good and bad alike. The question of regulation of
the trusts stands apart from the question of tariff
revision.
Stability of economic policy must always be the
prime economic need of this country. This stability
should not be fossilization. The country has acquiesced
in the wisdom of the protective tariff principle.
It is exceedingly undesirable that this system should
be destroyed or that there should be violent and radical
changes therein. Our past experience shows
that great prosperity in this country has always
come under a protective tariff and that the country
can not prosper under fitful tariff changes at short
intervals. Moreover, if the tariff laws as a whole
work well, and if business has prospered under them
and is prospering, it is better to endure for a time
slight inconveniences and inequalities in some schedules
than to upset business by too quick and too radical
changes. It is most earnestly to be wished that
we could treat the tariff from the standpoint solely
of our business needs. It is, perhaps, too much to
hope that partisanship may be entirely excluded from
consideration of the subject, but at least it can be
made secondary to the business interests of the
country—that is, to the interests of our people as a
whole. Unquestionably these business interests will
best be served if together with fixity of principle as
regards the tariff we combine a system which will
permit us from time to time to make the necessary
reapplication of the principle to the shifting national
needs. We must take scrupulous care that the reapplication
shall be made in such a way that it will
not amount to a dislocation of our system, the
mere threat of which (not to speak of the performance)
would produce paralysis in the business energies
of the community. The first consideration in
making these changes would, of course, be to preserve
the principle which underlies our whole tariff
system—that is, the principle of putting American
business interests at least on a full equality with interests
abroad, and of always allowing a sufficient
rate of duty to more than cover the difference between
the labor cost here and abroad. The well-being
of the wage-worker, like the well-being of the
tiller of the soil, should be treated as an essential in
shaping our whole economic policy. There must
never be any change which will jeopardize the standard
of comfort, the standard of wages of the American
wage-worker.
One way in which the readjustment sought can
be reached is by reciprocity treaties. It is greatly to
be desired that such treaties may be adopted. They
can be used to widen our markets and to give a
greater field for the activities of our producers on
the one hand, and on the other hand to secure in
practical shape the lowering of duties when they
are no longer needed for protection among our own
people, or when the minimum of damage done may
be disregarded for the sake of the maximum of
good accomplished. If it prove impossible to ratify
the pending treaties, and if there seem to be no
warrant for the endeavor to execute others, or to
amend the pending treaties so that they can be ratified,
then the same end—to secure reciprocity—should
be met by direct legislation.
Wherever the tariff conditions are such that a
needed change can not with advantage be made by
the application of the reciprocity idea, then it can
be made outright by a lowering of duties on a given
product. If possible, such change should be made
only after the fullest consideration by practical experts,
who should approach the subject from a business
standpoint, having in view both the particular
interests affected and the commercial well-being of
the people as a whole. The machinery for providing
such careful investigation can readily be supplied.
The executive department has already at its disposal
methods of collecting facts and figures; and if
the Congress desires additional consideration to that
which will be given the subject by its own committees,
then a commission of business experts can
be appointed whose duty it should be to recommend
action by the Congress after a deliberate and scientific
examination of the various schedules as they
are affected by the changed and changing conditions.
The unhurried and unbiased report of this commission
would show what changes should be made
in the various schedules, and how far these changes
could go without also changing the great prosperity
which this country is now enjoying, or upsetting its
fixed economic policy.
The cases in which the tariff can produce a monopoly
are so few as to constitute an inconsiderable
factor in the question; but of course if in any case
it be found that a given rate of duty does promote
a monopoly which works ill, no protectionist would
object to such reduction of the duty as would equalize
competition.
In my judgment, the tariff on anthracite coal
should be removed, and anthracite put actually,
where it now is nominally, on the free list. This
would have no effect at all save in crises; but in
crises it might be of service to the people.
Interest rates are a potent factor in business activity,
and in order that these rates may be equalized
to meet the varying needs of the seasons and of
widely separated communities, and to prevent the
recurrence of financial stringencies which injuriously
affect legitimate business, it is necessary that there
should be an element of elasticity in our monetary
system. Banks are the natural servants of commerce,
and upon them should be placed, as far as
practicable, the burden of furnishing and maintaining
a circulation adequate to supply the needs of
our diversified industries and of our domestic and
foreign commerce; and the issue of this should be
so regulated that a sufficient supply should be always
available for the business interests of the
country.
It would be both unwise and unnecessary at this
time to attempt to reconstruct our financial system,
which has been the growth of a century; but some
additional legislation is, I think, desirable. The
mere outline of any plan sufficiently comprehensive
to meet these requirements would transgress the
appropriate limits of this communication. It is suggested,
however, that all future legislation on the
subject should be with the view of encouraging the
use of such instrumentalities as will automatically
supply every legitimate demand of productive industries
and of commerce, not only in the amount,
but in the character of circulation; and of making
all kinds of money interchangeable, and, at the will
of the holder, convertible into the established gold
standard.
I again call your attention to the need of passing
a proper immigration law, covering the points outlined
in my Message to you at the first session of
the present Congress; substantially such a bill has
already passed the House.
How to secure fair treatment alike for labor and
for capital, how to hold in check the unscrupulous
man, whether employer or employee, without weakening
individual initiative, without hampering and
cramping the industrial development of the country,
is a problem fraught with great difficulties and one
which it is of the highest importance to solve on
lines of sanity and far-sighted common-sense as well
as of devotion to the right. This is an era of federation
and combination. Exactly as business men find
they must often work through corporations, and as
it is a constant tendency of these corporations to
grow larger, so it is often necessary for laboring
men to work in federations, and these have become
important factors of modern industrial life. Both
kinds of federation, capitalistic and labor, can do
much good, and as a necessary corollary they can
both do evil. Opposition to each kind of organization
should take the form of opposition to whatever
is bad in the conduct of any given corporation or union—not
of attacks upon corporations as such nor upon
unions as such; for some of the most far-reaching
beneficent work for our people has been accomplished
through both corporations and unions. Each must
refrain from arbitrary or tyrannous interference
with the rights of others. Organized capital and
organized labor alike should remember that in the
long run the interest of each must be brought into
harmony with the interest of the general public; and
the conduct of each must conform to the fundamental
rules of obedience to the law, of individual freedom,
and of justice and fair dealing toward all. Each
should remember that in addition to power it must
strive after the realization of healthy, lofty, and generous
ideals. Every employer, ever wage-worker,
must be guaranteed his liberty and his right to do as
he likes with his property or his labor so long as he
does not infringe upon the rights of others. It is
of the highest importance that employer and employee
alike should endeavor to appreciate each the
viewpoint of the other and the sure disaster that will
come upon both in the long run if either grows to
take as habitual an attitude of sour hostility and distrust
toward the other. Few people deserve better
of the country than those representatives both of
capital and labor—and there are many such—who
work continually to bring about a good understanding
of this kind, based upon wisdom and upon broad
and kindly sympathy between employers and employed.
Above all, we need to remember that any
kind of class animosity in the political world is, if
possible, even more wicked, even more destructive
to national welfare, than sectional, race, or religious
animosity. We can get good government only upon
condition that we keep true to the principles upon
which this Nation was founded, and judge each man
not as a part of a class, but upon his individual merits.
All that we have a right to ask of any man,
rich or poor, whatever his creed, his occupation, his
birthplace, or his residence, is that he shall act well
and honorably by his neighbor and by his country.
We are neither for the rich man as such nor for the
poor man as such; we are for the upright man, rich
or poor. So far as the constitutional powers of the
National Government touch these matters of general
and vital moment to the Nation, they should be exercised
in conformity with the principles above set
forth.
It is earnestly hoped that a secretary of commerce
may be created, with a seat in the Cabinet. The
rapid multiplication of questions affecting labor and
capital, the growth and complexity of the organizations
through which both labor and capital now find
expression, the steady tendency toward the employment
of capital in huge corporations, and the
wonderful strides of this country toward leadership
in the international business world justify an urgent
demand for the creation of such a position. Substantially
all the leading commercial bodies in this
country have united in requesting its creation. It
is desirable that some such measure as that which
has already passed the Senate be enacted into law.
The creation of such a department would in itself
be an advance toward dealing with and exercising
supervision over the whole subject of the great
corporations doing an interstate business; and with
this end in view, the Congress should endow the
department with large powers, which could be increased
as experience might show the need.
I hope soon to submit to the Senate a reciprocity
treaty with Cuba. On May 20 last the United
States kept its promise to the island by formally
vacating Cuban soil and turning Cuba over to those
whom her own people had chosen as the first officials
of the new republic.
Cuba lies at our doors, and whatever affects her
for good or for ill affects us also. So much have
our people felt this that in the Platt Amendment we
definitely took the ground that Cuba must hereafter
have closer political relations with us than with any
other power. Thus in a sense Cuba has become a
part of our international political system. This
makes it necessary that in return she should be given
some of the benefits of becoming part of our economic
system. It is, from our own standpoint, a
shortsighted and mischievous policy to fail to
recognize this need. Moreover, it is unworthy of
a mighty and generous nation, itself the greatest
and most successful republic in history, to refuse to
stretch out a helping hand to a young and weak
sister republic just entering upon its career of independence.
We should always fearlessly insist upon
our rights in the face of the strong, and we should
with ungrudging hand do our generous duty by the
weak. I urge the adoption of reciprocity with Cuba
not only because it is eminently for our own interests
to control the Cuban market and by every means
to foster our supremacy in the tropical lands and
waters south of us, but also because we, of the giant
republic of the north, should make all our sister nations
of the American Continent feel that whenever
they will permit it we desire to show ourselves disinterestedly
and effectively their friend.
A convention with Great Britain has been concluded,
which will be at once laid before the Senate
for ratification, providing for reciprocal trade arrangements
between the United States and Newfoundland
on substantially the lines of the convention
formerly negotiated by the Secretary of State,
Mr. Blaine. I believe reciprocal trade relations will
be greatly to the advantage of both countries.
As civilization grows warfare becomes less and
less the normal condition of foreign relations. The
last century has seen a marked diminution of wars
between civilized powers; wars with uncivilized
powers are largely mere matters of international
police duty, essential for the welfare of the world.
Wherever possible, arbitration or some similar
method should be employed in lieu of war to settle
difficulties between civilized nations, although as yet
the world has not progressed sufficiently to render
it possible, or necessarily desirable, to invoke arbitration
in every case. The formation of the international
tribunal which sits at The Hague is an
event of good omen from which great consequences
for the welfare of all mankind may flow. It is
far better, where possible, to invoke such a permanent
tribunal than to create special arbitrators for
a given purpose.
It is a matter of sincere congratulation to our
country that the United States and Mexico should
have been the first to use the good offices of The
Hague Court. This was done last summer with
most satisfactory results in the case of a claim at
issue between us and our sister republic. It is
earnestly to be hoped that this first case will serve
as a precedent for others, in which not only the
United States but foreign nations may take advantage
of the machinery already in existence at
The Hague.
I commend to the favorable consideration of the
Congress the Hawaiian fire claims, which were the
subject of careful investigation during the last
session.
The Congress has wisely provided that we shall
build at once an Isthmian Canal, if possible at Panama.
The Attorney-General reports that we can undoubtedly
acquire good title from the French Panama
Canal Company. Negotiations are now pending
with Colombia to secure her assent to our building
the canal. This canal will be one of the greatest
engineering feats of the twentieth century; a greater
engineering feat than has yet been accomplished
during the history of mankind. The work should
be carried out as a continuing policy without regard
to change of Administration; and it should
be begun under circumstances which will make it
a matter of pride for all Administrations to continue
the policy.
The canal will be of great benefit to America,
and of importance to all the world. It will be of
advantage to us industrially and also as improving
our military position. It will be of advantage to
the countries of tropical America. It is earnestly
to be hoped that all of these countries will do as
some of them have already done with signal success,
and will invite to their shores commerce and
improve their material conditions by recognizing
that stability and order are the prerequisites of successful
development. No independent nation in
America need have the slightest fear of aggression
from the United States. It behooves each one to
maintain order within its own borders and to discharge
its just obligations to foreigners. When
this is done they can rest assured that, be they strong
or weak, they have nothing to dread from outside
interference. More and more the increasing interdependence
and complexity of international, political,
and economic relations render it incumbent on
all civilized and orderly powers to insist on the
proper policing of the world.
During the fall of 1901 a communication was
addressed to the Secretary of State, asking whether
permission would be granted by the President to
a corporation to lay a cable from a point on the
California coast to the Philippine Islands by way of
Hawaii. A statement of conditions or terms upon
which such corporation would undertake to lay and
operate a cable was volunteered.
Inasmuch as the Congress was shortly to convene,
and Pacific cable legislation had been the subject of
consideration by the Congress for several years, it
seemed to me wise to defer action upon the application
until the Congress had first an opportunity
to act. The Congress adjourned without taking
any action, leaving the matter in exactly the same
condition in which it stood when the Congress convened.
Meanwhile it appears that the Commercial Pacific
Cable Company had promptly proceeded with preparations
for laying its cable. It also made application
to the President for access to and use of
soundings taken by the U. S. S. Nero, for the
purpose of discovering a practicable route for a
trans-Pacific cable, the company urging that with
access to these soundings it could complete its cable
much sooner than if it were required to take soundings
upon its own account. Pending consideration
of this subject, it appeared important and desirable
to attach certain conditions to the permission to examine
and use the soundings, if it should be granted.
In consequence of this solicitation of the cable
company, certain conditions were formulated, upon
which the President was willing to allow access to
these soundings and to consent to the landing and
laying of the cable, subject to any alterations or additions
thereto imposed by the Congress. This was
deemed proper, especially as it was clear that a cable
connection of some kind with China, a foreign country,
was a part of the company’s plan. This course
was, moreover, in accordance with a line of precedents,
including President Grant’s action in the
case of the first French cable, explained to the Congress
in his Annual Message of December, 1875,
and the instance occurring in 1879 of the second
French cable from Brest to St. Pierre, with a branch
to Cape Cod.
These conditions prescribed, among other things,
a maximum rate for commercial messages and that
the company should construct a line from the Philippine
Islands to China, there being at present, as is
well known, a British line from Manila to Hongkong.
The representatives of the cable company kept
these conditions long under consideration, continuing,
in the meantime, to prepare for laying the cable.
They have, however, at length acceded to them, and
an all-American line between our Pacific coast and
the Chinese Empire, by way of Honolulu and the
Philippine Islands, is thus provided for, and is expected
within a few months to be ready for business.
Among the conditions is one reserving the power
of the Congress to modify or repeal any or all of
them. A copy of the conditions is herewith transmitted.
Of Porto Rico it is only necessary to say that
the prosperity of the island and the wisdom with
which it has been governed have been such as to
make it serve as an example of all that is best in
insular administration.
On July 4 last, on the one hundred and twenty-sixth
anniversary of the declaration of our independence,
peace and amnesty were promulgated in
the Philippine Islands. Some trouble has since from
time to time threatened with the Mohammedan Moros,
but with the late insurrectionary Filipinos the
war has entirely ceased. Civil government has now
been introduced. Not only does each Filipino enjoy
such rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness as he has never before known during
the recorded history of the islands, but the people
taken as a whole now enjoy a measure of self-government
greater than that granted to any other
Orientals by any foreign power and greater than
that enjoyed by any other Orientals under their own
governments, save the Japanese alone. We have
not gone too far in granting these rights of liberty
and self-government; but we have certainly gone
to the limit that in the interests of the Philippine
people themselves it was wise or just to go. To
hurry matters, to go faster than we are now going,
would entail calamity on the people of the islands.
No policy ever entered into by the American people
has vindicated itself in more signal manner than the
policy of holding the Philippines. The triumph of
our arms, above all the triumph of our laws and
principles, has come sooner than we had any right
to expect. Too much praise can not be given to
the army for what it has done in the Philippines
both in warfare and from an administrative standpoint
in preparing the way for civil government;
and similar credit belongs to the civil authorities
for the way in which they have planted the seeds
of self-government in the ground thus made ready
for them. The courage, the unflinching endurance,
the high soldierly efficiency, and the general kind-heartedness
and humanity of our troops have been
strikingly manifested. There now remain only some
fifteen thousand troops in the islands. All told,
over one hundred thousand have been sent there.
Of course, there have been individual instances of
wrongdoing among them. They warred under fearful
difficulties of climate and surroundings; and
under the strain of the terrible provocations which
they continually received from their foes, occasional
instances of cruel retaliation occurred. Every effort
has been made to prevent such cruelties, and
finally these efforts have been completely successful.
Every effort has also been made to detect and
punish the wrongdoers. After making all allowance
for these misdeeds, it remains true that few
indeed have been the instances in which war has
been waged by a civilized power against semi-civilized
or barbarous forces where there has been so
little wrongdoing by the victors as in the Philippine
Islands. On the other hand, the amount of
difficult, important, and beneficent work which has
been done is wellnigh incalculable.
Taking the work of the army and the civil authorities
together, it may be questioned whether
anywhere else in modern times the world has seen
a better example of real constructive statesmanship
than our people have given in the Philippine Islands.
High praise should also be given those Filipinos,
in the aggregate very numerous, who have accepted
the new conditions and joined with our representatives
to work with hearty good-will for the welfare
of the islands.
The army has been reduced to the minimum allowed
by law. It is very small for the size of the
nation, and most certainly should be kept at the
highest point of efficiency. The senior officers are
given scant chance under ordinary conditions to exercise
commands commensurate with their rank, under
circumstances which would fit them to do their
duty in the time of actual war. A system of manœuvring
our army in bodies of some little size has
been begun and should be steadily continued. Without
such manœuvres it is folly to expect that in the
event of hostilities with any serious foe even a
small army corps could be handled to advantage.
Both our officers and enlisted men are such that we
can take hearty pride in them. No better material
can be found. But they must be thoroughly trained,
both as individuals and in the mass. The marksmanship
of the men must receive special attention. In
the circumstances of modern warfare the man must
act far more on his own individual responsibility
than ever before, and the high individual efficiency
of the unit is of the utmost importance. Formerly
this unit was the regiment; it is now not the regiment,
not even the troop or company; it is the individual
soldier. Every effort must be made to
develop every workmanlike and soldierly quality in
both the officer and the enlisted man.
I urgently call your attention to the need of passing
a bill providing for a general staff and for the
reorganization of the supply departments on the
lines of the bill proposed by the Secretary of War
last year. When the young officers enter the army
from West Point they probably stand above their
compeers in any other military service. Every effort
should be made, by training, by reward of
merit, by scrutiny into their careers and capacity,
to keep them of the same high relative excellence
throughout their careers.
The measure providing for the reorganization of
the militia system and for securing the highest efficiency
in the National Guard, which has already
passed the House, should receive prompt attention
and action. It is of great importance that the relation
of the National Guard to the militia and volunteer
forces of the United States should be defined,
and that in place of our present obsolete laws
a practical and efficient system should be adopted.
Provision should be made to enable the Secretary
of War to keep cavalry and artillery horses, worn-out
in long performance of duty. Such horses fetch
but a trifle when sold; and rather than turn them
out to the misery awaiting them when thus disposed
of, it would be better to employ them at light
work around the posts, and when necessary to put
them painlessly to death.
For the first time in our history naval manœuvres
on a large scale are being held under the immediate
command of the admiral of the navy. Constantly
increasing attention is being paid to the gunnery
of the navy, but it is yet far from what it should
be. I earnestly urge that the increase asked for by
the Secretary of the Navy in the appropriation for
improving the marksmanship be granted. In battle
the only shots that count are the shots that hit.
It is necessary to provide ample funds for practice
with the great guns in time of peace. These funds
must provide not only for the purchase of projectiles,
but for allowances for prizes to encourage the gun
crews, and especially the gun pointers, and for
perfecting an intelligent system under which alone
it is possible to get good practice.
There should be no halt in the work of building
up the navy, providing every year additional
fighting craft. We are a very rich country, vast
in extent of territory and great in population; a
country, moreover, which has an army diminutive
indeed when compared with that of any other first-class
power. We have deliberately made our own
certain foreign policies which demand the possession
of a first-class navy. The Isthmian Canal will
greatly increase the efficiency of our navy if the
navy is of sufficient size; but if we have an inadequate
navy, then the building of the canal would
be merely giving a hostage to any power of superior
strength. The Monroe Doctrine should be treated
as the cardinal feature of American foreign policy;
but it would be worse than idle to assert it unless
we intended to back it up, and it can be backed
up only by a thoroughly good navy. A good navy
is not a provocative of war. It is the surest guaranty
of peace.
Each individual unit of our navy should be the
most efficient of its kind as regards both material
and personnel that is to be found in the world. I
call your special attention to the need of providing
for the manning of the ships. Serious trouble
threatens us if we can not do better than we are
now doing as regards securing the services of a
sufficient number of the highest type of sailormen,
of sea mechanics. The veteran seamen of our warships
are of as high a type as can be found in any
navy which rides the waters of the world; they are
unsurpassed in daring, in resolution, in readiness, in
thorough knowledge of their profession. They deserve
every consideration that can be shown them.
But there are not enough of them. It is no more
possible to improvise a crew than it is possible to improvise
a warship. To build the finest ship, with
the deadliest battery, and to send it afloat with a
raw crew, no matter how brave they were individually,
would be to insure disaster if a foe of average
capacity were encountered. Neither ships nor men
can be improvised when war has begun.
We need a thousand additional officers in order
to properly man the ships now provided for and
under construction. The classes at the naval school
at Annapolis should be greatly enlarged. At the
same time that we thus add the officers where we
need them, we should facilitate the retirement of
those at the head of the list whose usefulness has
become impaired. Promotion must be fostered if
the service is to be kept efficient.
The lamentable scarcity of officers, and the large
number of recruits and of unskilled men necessarily
put aboard the new vessels as they have been commissioned,
has thrown upon our officers, and especially
on the lieutenants and junior grades, unusual
labor and fatigue and has gravely strained their
powers of endurance. Nor is there sign of any immediate
let-up in this strain. It must continue for
some time longer, until more officers are graduated
from Annapolis, and until the recruits become trained
and skilful in their duties. In these difficulties incident
upon the development of our war fleet the conduct
of all our officers has been creditable to the
service, and the lieutenants and junior grades in
particular have displayed an ability and a steadfast
cheerfulness which entitles them to the ungrudging
thanks of all who realize the disheartening
trials and fatigues to which they are of necessity
subjected.
There is not a cloud on the horizon at present.
There seems not the slightest chance of trouble with
a foreign power. We most earnestly hope that this
state of things may continue; and the way to insure
its continuance is to provide for a thoroughly efficient
navy. The refusal to maintain such a navy
would invite trouble, and if trouble came would ensure
disaster. Fatuous self-complacency or vanity,
or short-sightedness in refusing to prepare for danger,
is both foolish and wicked in such a nation as
ours; and past experience has shown that such fatuity
in refusing to recognize or prepare for any crisis
in advance is usually succeeded by a mad panic of
hysterical fear once the crisis has actually arrived.
The striking increase in the revenues of the Post-Office
Department shows clearly the prosperity of
our people and the increasing activity of the business
of the country.
The receipts of the Post-Office Department for
the fiscal year ending June 30 last amounted to $121,848,047.26,
an increase of $10,216,853.87 over the
preceding year, the largest increase known in the history
of the postal service. The magnitude of this
increase will best appear from the fact that the entire
postal receipts for the year 1860 amounted to
but $8,518,067.
Rural free-delivery service is no longer in the experimental
stage; it has become a fixed policy. The
results following its introduction have fully justified
the Congress in the large appropriations made for its
establishment and extension. The average yearly
increase in post-office receipts in the rural districts
of the country is about two per cent. We are now
able, by actual results, to show that where rural free-delivery
service has been established to such an extent
as to enable us to make comparisons the yearly
increase has been upward of ten per cent.
On November 1, 1902, 11,650 rural free-delivery
routes had been established and were in operation,
covering about one-third of the territory of the
United States available for rural free-delivery service.
There are now awaiting the action of the Department
petitions and applications for the establishment
of 10,748 additional routes. This shows
conclusively the want which the establishment of
the service has met and the need of further extending
it as rapidly as possible. It is justified both by
the financial results and by the practical benefits to
our rural population; it brings the men who live on
the soil into close relations with the active business
world; it keeps the farmer in daily touch with the
markets; it is a potential educational force; it enhances
the value of farm property, makes farm life
far pleasanter and less isolated, and will do much
to check the undesirable current from country to
city.
It is to be hoped that the Congress will make liberal
appropriations for the continuance of the service
already established and for its further extension.
Few subjects of more importance have been taken
up by the Congress in recent years than the inauguration
of the system of nationally-aided irrigation
for the arid regions of the far West. A good beginning
therein has been made. Now that this policy
of national irrigation has been adopted, the need
of thorough and scientific forest protection will grow
more rapidly than ever throughout the public-land
States.
Legislation should be provided for the protection
of the game, and the wild creatures generally, on
the forest reserves. The senseless slaughter of
game, which can by judicious protection be permanently
preserved on our national reserves for the
people as a whole, should be stopped at once. It is,
for instance, a serious count against our national
good sense to permit the present practice of butchering
off such a stately and beautiful creature as the
elk for its antlers or tusks.
So far as they are available for agriculture, and
to whatever extent they may be reclaimed under the
national irrigation law, the remaining public lands
should be held rigidly for the home builder, the settler
who lives on his land, and for no one else. In
their actual use the desert-land law, the timber and
stone law, and the commutation clause of the homestead
law have been so perverted from the intention
with which they were enacted as to permit the acquisition
of large areas of the public domain for
other than actual settlers and the consequent prevention
of settlement. Moreover, the approaching exhaustion
of the public ranges has of late led to much
discussion as to the best manner of using these public
lands in the West which are suitable chiefly or only
for grazing. The sound and steady development of
the West depends upon the building up of homes
therein. Much of our prosperity as a nation has
been due to the operation of the homestead law. On
the other hand, we should recognize the fact that in
the grazing region the man who corresponds to the
homesteader may be unable to settle permanently if
only allowed to use the same amount of pasture land
that his brother, the homesteader, is allowed to use
of arable land. One hundred and sixty acres of
fairly rich and well-watered soil, or a much smaller
amount of irrigated land, may keep a family in
plenty, whereas no one could get a living from one
hundred and sixty acres of dry pasture land capable
of supporting at the outside only one head of cattle
to every ten acres. In the past great tracts of the
public domain have been fenced in by persons having
no title thereto, in direct defiance of the law forbidding
the maintenance or construction of any such
unlawful inclosure of public land. For various reasons
there has been little interference with such inclosures
in the past, but ample notice has now been
given the trespassers, and all the resources at the
command of the Government will hereafter be used
to put a stop to such trespassing.
In view of the capital importance of these matters,
I commend them to the earnest consideration of the
Congress, and if the Congress finds difficulty in dealing
with them from lack of thorough knowledge of
the subject, I recommend that provision be made for
a commission of experts specially to investigate and
report upon the complicated questions involved.
I especially urge upon the Congress the need of
wise legislation for Alaska. It is not to our credit
as a nation that Alaska, which has been ours for
thirty-five years, should still have as poor a system
of laws as is the case. No country has a more valuable
possession—in mineral wealth, in fisheries, furs,
forests, and also in land available for certain kinds
of farming and stock-growing. It is a territory of
great size and varied resources, well fitted to support
a large permanent population. Alaska needs a good
land law and such provisions for homesteads and pre-emptions
as will encourage permanent settlement.
We should shape legislation with a view not to the
exploiting and abandoning of the territory, but to
the building up of homes therein. The land laws
should be liberal in type, so as to hold out inducements
to the actual settler whom we most desire to
see take possession of the country. The forests of
Alaska should be protected, and, as a secondary but
still important matter, the game also, and at the
same time it is imperative that the settlers should
be allowed to cut timber, under proper regulations,
for their own use. Laws should be enacted to protect
the Alaskan salmon fisheries against the greed
which would destroy them. They should be preserved
as a permanent industry and food supply.
Their management and control should be turned over
to the Commission of Fish and Fisheries. Alaska
should have a Delegate in the Congress. It would
be well if a Congressional committee could visit
Alaska and investigate its needs on the ground.
In dealing with the Indians our aim should be
their ultimate absorption into the body of our people.
But in many cases this absorption must and
should be very slow. In portions of the Indian Territory
the mixture of blood has gone on at the same
time with progress in wealth and education, so that
there are plenty of men with varying degrees of
purity of Indian blood who are absolutely indistinguishable
in point of social, political, and economic
ability from their white associates. There are other
tribes which have as yet made no perceptible advance
toward such equality. To try to force such tribes
too fast is to prevent their going forward at all.
Moreover, the tribes live under widely different conditions.
Where a tribe has made considerable advance
and lives on fertile farming soil it is possible
to allot the members lands in severalty much as is
the case with white settlers. There are other tribes
where such a course is not desirable. On the arid
prairie lands the effort should be to induce the Indians
to lead pastoral rather than agricultural lives,
and to permit them to settle in villages rather than
to force them into isolation.
The large Indian schools situated remote from
any Indian reservation do a special and peculiar work
of great importance. But, excellent though these
are, an immense amount of additional work must be
done on the reservations themselves among the old,
and above all among the young, Indians.
The first and most important step toward the absorption
of the Indian is to teach him to earn his
living; yet it is not necessarily to be assumed that in
each community all Indians must become either tillers
of the soil or stock-raisers. Their industries may
properly be diversified, and those who show special
desire or adaptability for industrial or even commercial
pursuits should be encouraged so far as practicable
to follow out each his own bent.
Every effort should be made to develop the Indian
along the lines of natural aptitude, and to encourage
the existing native industries peculiar to
certain tribes, such as the various kinds of basket
weaving, canoe building, smith work, and blanket
work. Above all, the Indian boys and girls should
be given confident command of colloquial English,
and should ordinarily be prepared for a vigorous
struggle with the conditions under which their people
live, rather than for immediate absorption into
some more highly developed community.
The officials who represent the Government in
dealing with the Indians work under hard conditions,
and also under conditions which render it
easy to do wrong and very difficult to detect wrong.
Consequently they should be amply paid on the one
hand, and on the other hand a particularly high
standard of conduct should be demanded from them,
and where misconduct can be proved the punishment
should be exemplary.
In no department of governmental work in recent
years has there been greater success than in that
of giving scientific aid to the farming population,
thereby showing them how most efficiently to help
themselves. There is no need of insisting upon its
importance, for the welfare of the farmer is fundamentally
necessary to the welfare of the Republic
as a whole. In addition to such work as quarantine
against animal and vegetable plagues, and warring
against them when here introduced, much efficient
help has been rendered to the farmer by the introduction
of new plants specially fitted for cultivation
under the peculiar conditions existing in different
portions of the country. New cereals have been established
in the semi-arid West. For instance, the
practicability of producing the best types of macaroni
wheats in regions of an annual rainfall of only
ten inches or thereabouts has been conclusively demonstrated.
Through the introduction of new rices
in Louisiana and Texas the production of rice in this
country has been made to about equal the home demand.
In the Southwest the possibility of regrassing
over-stocked range lands has been demonstrated;
in the North many new forage crops have been
introduced, while in the East it has been shown
that some of our choicest fruits can be stored and
shipped in such a way as to find a profitable market
abroad.
I again recommend to the favorable consideration
of the Congress the plans of the Smithsonian Institution
for making the Museum under its charge
worthy of the Nation, and for preserving at the National
Capital not only records of the vanishing races
of men but of the animals of this continent which,
like the buffalo, will soon become extinct unless specimens
from which their representatives may be renewed
are sought in their native regions and maintained
there in safety.
The District of Columbia is the only part of our
territory in which the National Government exercises
local or municipal functions, and where in
consequence the Government has a free hand in reference
to certain types of social and economic legislation
which must be essentially local or municipal
in their character. The Government should see to
it, for instance, that the hygienic and sanitary legislation
affecting Washington is of a high character.
The evils of slum dwellings, whether in the shape
of crowded and congested tenement-house districts
or of the back-alley type, should never be permitted
to grow up in Washington. The city should be a
model in every respect for all the cities of the country.
The charitable and correctional systems of the
District should receive consideration at the hands of
the Congress to the end that they may embody the
results of the most advanced thought in these fields.
Moreover, while Washington is not a great industrial
city, there is some industrialism here, and our
labor legislation, while it would not be important in
itself, might be made a model for the rest of the
Nation. We should pass, for instance, a wise employer’s-liability
act for the District of Columbia,
and we need such an act in our navy yards. Railroad
companies in the District ought to be required
by law to block their frogs.
The safety-appliance law, for the better protection
of the lives and limbs of railway employees, which
was passed in 1893, went into full effect on August
1, 1901. It has resulted in averting thousands of
casualties. Experience shows, however, the necessity
of additional legislation to perfect this law. A
bill to provide for this passed the Senate at the last
session. It is to be hoped that some such measure
may now be enacted into law.
There is a growing tendency to provide for the
publication of masses of documents for which there
is no public demand and for the printing of which
there is no real necessity. Large numbers of volumes
are turned out by the Government printing
presses for which there is no justification. Nothing
should be printed by any of the Departments unless
it contains something of permanent value, and the
Congress could with advantage cut down very materially
on all the printing which it has now become
customary to provide. The excessive cost of Government
printing is a strong argument against the
position of those who are inclined on abstract
grounds to advocate the Government’s doing any
work which can with propriety be left in private
hands.
Gratifying progress has been made during the
year in the extension of the merit system of making
appointments in the Government service. It should
be extended by law to the District of Columbia. It
is much to be desired that our consular system be
established by law on a basis providing for appointment
and promotion only in consequence of proved
fitness.
Through a wise provision of the Congress at its
last session, the White House, which had become
disfigured by incongruous additions and changes,
has now been restored to what it was planned to be
by Washington. In making the restorations the
utmost care has been exercised to come as near as
possible to the early plans and to supplement these
plans by a careful study of such buildings as that of
the University of Virginia, which was built by Jefferson.
The White House is the property of the
Nation, and so far as is compatible with living therein
it should be kept as it originally was, for the same
reasons that we keep Mount Vernon as it originally
was. The stately simplicity of its architecture is
an expression of the character of the period in which
it was built, and is in accord with the purposes it was
designed to serve. It is a good thing to preserve
such buildings as historic monuments which keep
alive our sense of continuity with the Nation’s
past.
The reports of the several Executive Departments
are submitted to the Congress with this communication.
Theodore Roosevelt.
White House,
December 2, 1902.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
I have convened the Congress that it may consider
the legislation necessary to put into operation
the commercial treaty with Cuba, which was ratified
by the Senate at its last session, and subsequently
by the Cuban Government. I deem such legislation
demanded not only by our interest but by our honor.
We can not with propriety abandon the course upon
which we have so wisely embarked. When the acceptance
of the Platt Amendment was required from
Cuba by the action of the Congress of the United
States, this Government thereby definitely committed
itself to the policy of treating Cuba as occupying
a unique position as regards this country. It was
provided that when the island became a free and independent
republic she should stand in such close
relations with us as in certain respects to come within
our system of international policy; and it necessarily
followed that she must also to a certain degree
become included within the lines of our economic
policy. Situated as Cuba is, it would not be possible
for this country to permit the strategic abuse
of the island by any foreign military power. It is
for this reason that certain limitations have been
imposed upon her financial policy, and that naval
stations have been conceded by her to the United
States. The negotiations as to the details of these
naval stations are on the eve of completion. They
are so situated as to prevent any idea that there is
the intention ever to use them against Cuba, or
otherwise than for the protection of Cuba from the
assaults of foreign foes, and for the better safeguarding
of American interests in the waters south
of us.
These interests have been largely increased by the
consequences of the war with Spain, and will be still
further increased by the building of the Isthmian
Canal. They are both military and economic. The
granting to us by Cuba of the naval stations above
alluded to is of the utmost importance from a military
standpoint, and is proof of the good faith with
which Cuba is treating us. Cuba has made great
progress since her independence was established.
She has advanced steadily in every way. She already
stands high among her sister republics of the
New World. She is loyally observing her obligations
to us; and she is entitled to like treatment by us.
The treaty submitted to you for approval secures
to the United States economic advantages as great
as those given to Cuba. Not an American interest
is sacrificed. By the treaty a large Cuban market is
secured to our producers. It is a market which lies
at our doors, which is already large, which is capable
of great expansion, and which is especially important
to the development of our export trade. It
would be indeed shortsighted for us to refuse to
take advantage of such an opportunity, and to force
Cuba into making arrangements with other countries
to our disadvantage.
This reciprocity treaty stands by itself. It is demanded
on considerations of broad national policy
as well as by our economic interest. It will do harm
to no industry. It will benefit many industries. It
is in the interest of our people as a whole, both because
of its importance from the broad standpoint
of international policy, and because economically it
intimately concerns us to develop and secure the rich
Cuban market for our farmers, artisans, merchants,
and manufacturers. Finally, it is desirable as a
guaranty of the good faith of our Nation toward
her young sister republic to the south, whose welfare
must ever be closely bound with ours. We gave
her liberty. We are knit to her by the memories
of the blood and the courage of our soldiers who
fought for her in war; by the memory of the wisdom
and integrity of our administrators who served her
in peace and who started her so well on the difficult
path of self-government. We must help her onward
and upward; and in helping her we shall help ourselves.
The foregoing considerations caused the negotiations
of the treaty with Cuba and its ratification by
the Senate. They now with equal force support
the legislation by the Congress which by the terms
of the treaty is necessary to render it operative. A
failure to enact such legislation would come perilously
near a repudiation of the pledged faith of the
Nation.
I transmit herewith the treaty, as amended by the
Senate and ratified by the Cuban Government.
Theodore Roosevelt.
White House,
November 10, 1903.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
The country is to be congratulated on the amount
of substantial achievement which has marked the
past year both as regards our foreign and as regards
our domestic policy.
With a nation as with a man the most important
things are those of the household, and therefore the
country is especially to be congratulated on what
has been accomplished in the direction of providing
for the exercise of supervision over the great corporations
and combinations of corporations engaged
in interstate commerce. The Congress has created
the Department of Commerce and Labor, including
the Bureau of Corporations, with for the first time
authority to secure proper publicity of such proceedings
of these great corporations as the public has
the right to know. It has provided for the expediting
of suits for the enforcement of the Federal anti-trust
law; and by another law it has secured equal
treatment to all producers in the transportation of
their goods, thus taking a long stride forward in
making effective the work of the Interstate Commerce
Commission.
The establishment of the Department of Commerce
and Labor, with the Bureau of Corporations
thereunder, marks a real advance in the direction of
doing all that is possible for the solution of the questions
vitally affecting capitalists and wage-workers.
The act creating the Department was approved on
February 14, 1903, and two days later the head
of the Department was nominated and confirmed
by the Senate. Since then the work of organization
has been pushed as rapidly as the initial appropriations
permitted, and with due regard to thoroughness
and the broad purposes which the Department
is designed to serve. After the transfer of the
various bureaus and branches to the Department at
the beginning of the current fiscal year, as provided
for in the act, the personnel comprised 1,289 employees
in Washington and 8,836 in the country at
large. The scope of the Department’s duty and
authority embraces the commercial and industrial
interests of the Nation. It is not designed to restrict
or control the fullest liberty of legitimate business
action, but to secure exact and authentic information
which will aid the Executive in enforcing
existing laws, and which will enable the Congress to
enact additional legislation, if any should be found
necessary, in order to prevent the few from obtaining
privileges at the expense of diminished opportunities
for the many.
The preliminary work of the Bureau of Corporations
in the Department has shown the wisdom of
its creation. Publicity in corporate affairs will tend
to do away with ignorance, and will afford facts
upon which intelligent action may be taken. Systematic,
intelligent investigation is already developing
facts the knowledge of which is essential to a
right understanding of the needs and duties of the
business world. The corporation which is honestly
and fairly organized, whose managers in the conduct
of its business recognize their obligation to deal
squarely with their stockholders, their competitors,
and the public, has nothing to fear from such supervision.
The purpose of this Bureau is not to embarrass
or assail legitimate business, but to aid in
bringing about a better industrial condition—a condition
under which there shall be obedience to law
and recognition of public obligation by all corporations,
great or small. The Department of Commerce
and Labor will be not only the clearing house
for information regarding the business transactions
of the Nation but the executive arm of the Government
to aid in strengthening our domestic and foreign
markets, in perfecting our transportation facilities,
in building up our merchant marine, in preventing
the entrance of undesirable immigrants, in
improving commercial and industrial conditions, and
in bringing together on common ground those necessary
partners in industrial progress—capital and
labor. Commerce between the nations is steadily
growing in volume, and the tendency of the times is
toward closer trade relations. Constant watchfulness
is needed to secure to Americans the chance to
participate to the best advantage in foreign trade;
and we may confidently expect that the new Department
will justify the expectation of its creators by
the exercise of this watchfulness, as well as by the
businesslike administration of such laws relating to
our internal affairs as are intrusted to its care.
In enacting the laws above enumerated the Congress
proceeded on sane and conservative lines.
Nothing revolutionary was attempted; but a common-sense
and successful effort was made in the
direction of seeing that corporations are so handled
as to subserve the public good. The legislation was
moderate. It was characterized throughout by the
idea that we were not attacking corporations, but endeavoring
to provide for doing away with any evil
in them; that we drew the line against misconduct,
not against wealth; gladly recognizing the great
good done by the capitalist who alone, or in conjunction
with his fellows, does his work along proper
and legitimate lines. The purpose of the legislation,
which purpose will undoubtedly be fulfilled, was
to favor such a man when he does well, and to supervise
his action only to prevent him from doing ill.
Publicity can do no harm to the honest corporation.
The only corporation that has cause to dread it is the
corporation which shrinks from the light, and about
the welfare of such corporations we need not be oversensitive.
The work of the Department of Commerce
and Labor has been conditioned upon this
theory, of securing fair treatment alike for labor and
for capital.
The consistent policy of the National Government,
so far as it has the power, is to hold in check the
unscrupulous man, whether employer or employee;
but to refuse to weaken individual initiative or to
hamper or cramp the industrial development of the
country. We recognize that this is an era of federation
and combination, in which great capitalistic
corporations and labor unions have become factors
of tremendous importance in all industrial centres.
Hearty recognition is given the far-reaching, beneficent
work which has been accomplished through
both corporations and unions, and the line as between
different corporations, as between different
unions, is drawn as it is between different individuals;
that is, it is drawn on conduct, the effort being
to treat both organized capital and organized labor
alike, asking nothing save that the interest of each
shall be brought into harmony with the interest of
the general public, and that the conduct of each shall
conform to the fundamental rules of obedience to
law, of individual freedom, and of justice and fair
dealing towards all. Whenever either corporation,
labor union, or individual disregards the law or acts
in a spirit of arbitrary and tyrannous interference
with the rights of others, whether corporations or
individuals, then where the Federal Government
has jurisdiction, it will see to it that the misconduct
is stopped, paying not the slightest heed to the position
or power of the corporation, the union or the
individual, but only to one vital fact—that is, the
question whether or not the conduct of the individual
or aggregate of individuals is in accordance with the
law of the land. Every man must be guaranteed
his liberty and his right to do as he likes with his
property or his labor, so long as he does not infringe
the rights of others. No man is above the
law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any
man’s permission when we require him to obey it.
Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not
asked as a favor.
We have cause as a Nation to be thankful for the
steps that have been so successfully taken to put
these principles into effect. The progress has been
by evolution, not by revolution. Nothing radical
has been done; the action has been both moderate
and resolute. Therefore the work will stand. There
shall be no backward step. If in the working of the
laws it proves desirable that they shall at any point
be expanded or amplified, the amendment can be
made as its desirability is shown. Meanwhile they
are being administered with judgment, but with insistence
upon obedience to them; and their need has
been emphasized in signal fashion by the events of
the past year.
From all sources, exclusive of the postal service,
the receipts of the Government for the last fiscal year
aggregated $560,396,674. The expenditures for the
same period were $506,099,007, the surplus for the
fiscal year being $54,297,667. The indications are
that the surplus for the present fiscal year will be
very small, if indeed there be any surplus. From
July to November the receipts from customs were,
approximately, nine million dollars less than the
receipts from the same source for a corresponding
portion of last year. Should this decrease continue
at the same ratio throughout the fiscal year, the
surplus would be reduced by, approximately, thirty
million dollars. Should the revenue from customs
suffer much further decrease during the fiscal year,
the surplus would vanish. A large surplus is certainly
undesirable. Two years ago the war taxes
were taken off with the express intention of equalizing
the governmental receipts and expenditures,
and though the first year thereafter still showed a
surplus, it now seems likely that a substantial equality
of revenue and expenditure will be attained.
Such being the case it is of great moment both to
exercise care and economy in appropriations, and
to scan sharply any change in our fiscal revenue system
which may reduce our income. The need of
strict economy in our expenditures is emphasized by
the fact that we can not afford to be parsimonious in
providing for what is essential to our national well-being.
Careful economy wherever possible will alone
prevent our income from falling below the point required
in order to meet our genuine needs.
The integrity of our currency is beyond question,
and under present conditions it would be unwise
and unnecessary to attempt a reconstruction of our
entire monetary system. The same liberty should
be granted the Secretary of the Treasury to deposit
customs receipts as is granted him in the deposit of
receipts from other sources. In my Message of December
2, 1902, I called attention to certain needs
of the financial situation, and I again ask the consideration
of the Congress for these questions.
During the last session of the Congress, at the
suggestion of a joint note from the Republic of
Mexico and the Imperial Government of China, and
in harmony with an act of the Congress appropriating
$25,000 to pay the expenses thereof, a commission
was appointed to confer with the principal
European countries in the hope that some plan might
be devised whereby a fixed rate of exchange could
be assured between the gold standard countries and
the silver standard countries. This commission has
filed its preliminary report, which has been made
public. I deem it important that the commission be
continued, and that a sum of money be appropriated
sufficient to pay the expenses of its further labors.
A majority of our people desire that steps be taken
in the interests of American shipping, so that we may
once more resume our former position in the ocean
carrying trade. But hitherto the differences of opinion
as to the proper method of reaching this end
have been so wide that it has proved impossible to
secure the adoption of any particular scheme. Having
in view these facts, I recommend that the Congress
direct the Secretary of the Navy, the Postmaster-General,
and the Secretary of Commerce
and Labor, associated with such a representation
from the Senate and House of Representatives as the
Congress in its wisdom may designate, to serve as a
commission for the purpose of investigating and
reporting to the Congress at its next session what
legislation is desirable or necessary for the development
of the American merchant marine and American
commerce, and incidentally of a national ocean
mail service of adequate auxiliary naval cruisers and
naval reserves. While such a measure is desirable
in any event, it is especially desirable at this time,
in view of the fact that our present governmental
contract for ocean mail with the American Line
will expire in 1905. Our ocean mail act was passed
in 1891. In 1895 our 20-knot transatlantic mail
line was equal to any foreign line. Since then
the Germans have put on 23-knot steamers, and the
British have contracted for 24-knot steamers. Our
service should equal the best. If it does not, the
commercial public will abandon it. If we are to stay
in the business it ought to be with a full understanding
of the advantages to the country on one
hand, and on the other with exact knowledge of the
cost and proper methods of carrying it on. Moreover,
lines of cargo ships are of even more importance
than fast mail lines, save so far as the latter
can be depended upon to furnish swift auxiliary
cruisers in time of war. The establishment of new
lines of cargo ships to South America, to Asia, and
elsewhere would be much in the interest of our
commercial expansion.
We can not have too much immigration of the
right kind, and we should have none at all of the
wrong kind. The need is to devise some system by
which undesirable immigrants shall be kept out entirely,
while desirable immigrants are properly distributed
throughout the country. At present some
districts which need immigrants have none; and in
others, where the population is already congested,
immigrants come in such numbers as to depress the
conditions of life for those already there. During
the last two years the immigration service at New
York has been greatly improved, and the corruption
and inefficiency which formerly obtained there have
been eradicated. This service has just been investigated
by a committee of New York citizens of high
standing, Messrs. Arthur v. Briesen, Lee K. Frankel,
Eugene A. Philbin, Thomas W. Hynes, and Ralph
Trautmann. Their report deals with the whole situation
at length, and concludes with certain recommendations
for administrative and legislative action.
It is now receiving the attention of the Secretary
of Commerce and Labor.
The special investigation of the subject of naturalization
under the direction of the Attorney-General,
and the consequent prosecutions, reveal a condition
of affairs calling for the immediate attention of the
Congress. Forgeries and perjuries of shameless
and flagrant character have been perpetrated, not
only in the dense centres of population, but throughout
the country; and it is established beyond doubt
that very many so-called citizens of the United
States have no title whatever to that right, and are
asserting and enjoying the benefits of the same
through the grossest frauds. It is never to be forgotten
that citizenship is, to quote the words recently
used by the Supreme Court of the United
States, an “inestimable heritage,” whether it proceeds
from birth within the country or is obtained
by naturalization; and we poison the sources of our
national character and strength at the fountain, if
the privilege is claimed and exercised without right,
and by means of fraud and corruption. The body
politic can not be sound and healthy if many of its
constituent members claim their standing through
the prostitution of the high right and calling of
citizenship. It should mean something to become
a citizen of the United States; and in the process
no loophole whatever should be left open to
fraud.
The methods by which these frauds—now under
full investigation with a view to meting out punishment
and providing adequate remedies—are perpetuated,
include many variations of procedure by
which false certificates of citizenship are forged in
their entirety; or genuine certificates fraudulently
or collusively obtained in blank are filled in by the
criminal conspirators; or certificates are obtained on
fraudulent statements as to the time of arrival and
residence in this country; or imposition and substitution
of another party for the real petitioner
occur in court; or certificates are made the subject of
barter and sale and transferred from the rightful
holder to those not entitled to them; or certificates
are forged by erasure of the original names and
the insertion of the names of other persons not entitled
to the same.
It is not necessary for me to refer here at large
to the causes leading to this state of affairs. The desire
for naturalization is heartily to be commended
where it springs from a sincere and permanent intention
to become citizens, and a real appreciation of
the privilege. But it is a source of untold evil and
trouble where it is traceable to selfish and dishonest
motives, such as the effort by artificial and improper
means, in wholesale fashion to create voters
who are ready-made tools of corrupt politicians, or
the desire to evade certain labor laws creating discriminations
against alien labor. All good citizens,
whether naturalized or native born, are equally interested
in protecting our citizenship against fraud
in any form, and, on the other hand, in affording
every facility for naturalization to those who in good
faith desire to share alike our privileges and our
responsibilities.
The Federal grand jury lately in session in New
York City dealt with this subject and made a presentment
which states the situation briefly and forcibly
and contains important suggestions for the consideration
of the Congress. This presentment is
included as an appendix to the report of the Attorney-General.
In my last annual Message, in connection with the
subject of the due regulation of combinations of
capital which are or may become injurious to the
public, I recommended a special appropriation for
the better enforcement of the anti-trust law as it
now stands, to be expended under the direction of
the Attorney-General. Accordingly (by the legislative,
executive, and judicial appropriation act of
February 25, 1903, 32 Stat., 854, 904), the Congress
appropriated, for the purpose of enforcing the
various Federal trust and interstate commerce laws,
the sum of five hundred thousand dollars, to be expended
under the direction of the Attorney-General
in the employment of special counsel and agents in
the Department of Justice to conduct proceedings
and prosecutions under said laws in the courts of the
United States. I now recommend, as a matter of
the utmost importance and urgency, the extension
of the purposes of this appropriation, so that it may
be available, under the direction of the Attorney-General,
and until used, for the due enforcement of
the laws of the United States in general and especially
of the civil and criminal laws relating to public
lands and the laws relating to postal crimes and
offences and the subject of naturalization. Recent
investigations have shown a deplorable state of affairs
in these three matters of vital concern. By
various frauds and by forgeries and perjuries, thousands
of acres of the public domain, embracing
lands of different character and extending through
various sections of the country, have been dishonestly
acquired. It is hardly necessary to urge the
importance of recovering these dishonest acquisitions,
stolen from the people, and of promptly and
duly punishing the offenders. I speak in another
part of this Message of the widespread crimes by
which the sacred right of citizenship is falsely asserted
and that “inestimable heritage” perverted to
base ends. By similar means—that is, through
frauds, forgeries, and perjuries, and by shameless
briberies—the laws relating to the proper conduct
of the public service in general and to the due administration
of the Post-Office Department have
been notoriously violated, and many indictments
have been found, and the consequent prosecutions
are in course of hearing or on the eve thereof. For
the reasons thus indicated, and so that the government
may be prepared to enforce promptly and with
the greatest effect the due penalties for such violations
of law, and to this end may be furnished with
sufficient instrumentalities and competent legal assistance
for the investigations and trials which will
be necessary at many different points of the country,
I urge upon the Congress the necessity of making the
said appropriation available for immediate use for
all such purposes, to be expended under the direction
of the Attorney-General.
Steps have been taken by the State Department
looking to the making of bribery an extraditable
offence with foreign powers. The need of more
effective treaties covering this crime is manifest.
The exposures and prosecutions of official corruption
in St. Louis, Mo., and other cities and States
have resulted in a number of givers and takers of
bribes becoming fugitives in foreign lands. Bribery
has not been included in extradition treaties heretofore,
as the necessity for it has not arisen. While
there may have been as much official corruption in
former years, there has been more developed and
brought to light in the immediate past than in the
preceding century of our country’s history. It
should be the policy of the United States to leave
no place on earth where a corrupt man fleeing from
this country can rest in peace. There is no reason
why bribery should not be included in all treaties
as extraditable. The recent amended treaty with
Mexico, whereby this crime was put in the list of
extraditable offences, has established a salutary precedent
in this regard. Under this treaty the State
Department has asked, and Mexico has granted, the
extradition of one of the St. Louis bribe givers.
There can be no crime more serious than bribery.
Other offences violate one law while corruption
strikes at the foundation of all law. Under our
form of government all authority is vested in the
people and by them delegated to those who represent
them in official capacity. There can be no offence
heavier than that of him in whom such a
sacred trust has been reposed, who sells it for his
own gain and enrichment; and no less heavy is the
offence of the bribe giver. He is worse than the
thief, for the thief robs the individual, while the
corrupt official plunders an entire city or State. He
is as wicked as the murderer, for the murderer may
only take one life against the law, while the corrupt
official and the man who corrupts the official alike
aim at the assassination of the commonwealth itself.
Government of the people, by the people, for the
people will perish from the face of the earth if bribery
is tolerated. The givers and takers of bribes
stand on an evil pre-eminence of infamy. The exposure
and punishment of public corruption is an
honor to a nation, not a disgrace. The shame lies
in toleration, not in correction. No city or State,
still less the Nation, can be injured by the enforcement
of law. As long as public plunderers when
detected can find a haven of refuge in any foreign
land and avoid punishment, just so long encouragement
is given them to continue their practices. If
we fail to do all that in us lies to stamp out corruption
we can not escape our share of responsibility
for the guilt. The first requisite of successful self-government
is unflinching enforcement of the law
and the cutting out of corruption.
For several years past the rapid development of
Alaska and the establishment of growing American
interests in regions theretofore unsurveyed and imperfectly
known brought into prominence the urgent
necessity of a practical demarcation of the boundaries
between the jurisdictions of the United States
and Great Britain. Although the treaty of 1825 between
Great Britain and Russia, the provisions of
which were copied in the treaty of 1867, whereby
Russia conveyed Alaska to the United States, was
positive as to the control, first by Russia and later
by the United States, of a strip of territory along
the continental mainland from the western shore of
Portland Canal to Mount St. Elias, following and
surrounding the indentations of the coast and including
the islands to the westward, its description
of the landward margin of the strip was indefinite,
resting on the supposed existence of a continuous
ridge or range of mountains skirting the coast, as
figured in the charts of the early navigators. It had
at no time been possible for either party in interest
to lay down, under the authority of the treaty, a line
so obviously exact according to its provisions as to
command the assent of the other. For nearly three-fourths
of a century the absence of tangible local
interests demanding the exercise of positive jurisdiction
on either side of the border left the question
dormant. In 1878, questions of revenue administration
on the Stikine River led to the establishment
of a provisional demarcation, crossing the channel
between two high peaks on either side about twenty-four
miles above the river mouth. In 1899, similar
questions growing out of the extraordinary development
of mining interests in the region about the
head of Lynn Canal brought about a temporary
modus vivendi, by which a convenient separation
was made at the watershed divides of the White
and Chilkoot passes and to the north of Klukwan,
on the Klehini River. These partial and tentative
adjustments could not, in the very nature of things,
be satisfactory or lasting. A permanent disposition
of the matter became imperative.
After unavailing attempts to reach an understanding
through a Joint High Commission, followed by
prolonged negotiations, conducted in an amicable
spirit, a convention between the United States and
Great Britain was signed, January 24, 1903, providing
for an examination of the subject by a mixed
tribunal of six members, three on a side, with a view
to its final disposition. Ratifications were exchanged
on March 3 last, whereupon the two governments
appointed their respective members. Those on behalf
of the United States were Elihu Root, Secretary
of War; Henry Cabot Lodge, a Senator of the
United States, and George Turner, an ex-Senator
of the United States, while Great Britain named the
Right Honorable Lord Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice
of England; Sir Louis Amable Jetté, K.C.M.G.,
retired judge of the Supreme Court of Quebec, and
A. B. Aylesworth, K.C., of Toronto. This Tribunal
met in London on September 3, under the Presidency
of Lord Alverstone. The proceedings were
expeditious, and marked by a friendly and conscientious
spirit. The respective cases, counter cases,
and arguments presented the issues clearly and fully.
On the 20th of October a majority of the Tribunal
reached and signed an agreement on all the questions
submitted by the terms of the Convention. By
this award the right of the United States to the
control of a continuous strip or border of the mainland
shore, skirting all the tide-water inlets and sinuosities
of the coast, is confirmed; the entrance to
Portland Canal (concerning which legitimate doubt
appeared) is defined as passing by Tongass Inlet
and to the northwestward of Wales and Pearse Islands;
a line is drawn from the head of Portland
Canal to the fifty-sixth degree of north latitude; and
the interior border line of the strip is fixed by lines
connecting certain mountain summits lying between
Portland Canal and Mount St. Elias, and running
along the crest of the divide separating the coast
slope from the inland watershed at the only part of
the frontier where the drainage ridge approaches the
coast within the distance of ten marine leagues stipulated
by the treaty as the extreme width of the
strip around the heads of Lynn Canal and its
branches.
While the line so traced follows the provisional
demarcation of 1878 at the crossing of the Stikine
River, and that of 1899 at the summits of the White
and Chilkoot passes, it runs much further inland
from the Klehini than the temporary line of the
later modus vivendi, and leaves the entire mining
district of the Porcupine River and Glacier Creek
within the jurisdiction of the United States.
The result is satisfactory in every way. It is of
great material advantage to our people in the Far
Northwest. It has removed from the field of discussion
and possible danger a question liable to become
more acutely accentuated with each passing
year. Finally, it has furnished a signal proof of
the fairness and good-will with which two friendly
nations can approach and determine issues involving
national sovereignty and by their nature incapable
of submission to a third power for adjudication.
The award is self-executing on the vital points.
To make it effective as regards the others it only remains
for the two governments to appoint, each on
its own behalf, one or more scientific experts, who
shall, with all convenient speed, proceed together to
lay down the boundary line in accordance with the
decision of the majority of the Tribunal. I recommend
that the Congress make adequate provision
for the appointment, compensation, and expenses of
the members to serve on this joint boundary commission
on the part of the United States.
It will be remembered that during the second session
of the last Congress Great Britain, Germany,
and Italy formed an alliance for the purpose of
blockading the ports of Venezuela and using such
other means of pressure as would secure a settlement
of claims due, as they alleged, to certain of
their subjects. Their employment of force for the
collection of these claims was terminated by an
agreement brought about through the offices of the
diplomatic representatives of the United States at
Caracas and the Government at Washington, thereby
ending a situation which was bound to cause increasing
friction, and which jeoparded the peace of
the continent. Under this agreement Venezuela
agreed to set apart a certain percentage of the customs
receipts of two of her ports to be applied to
the payment of whatever obligations might be ascertained
by mixed commissions appointed for that purpose
to be due from her, not only to the three powers
already mentioned, whose proceedings against her
had resulted in a state of war, but also to the United
States, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Sweden and Norway, and Mexico, who had not
employed force for the collection of the claims alleged
to be due to certain of their citizens.
A demand was then made by the so-called blockading
powers that the sums ascertained to be due
to their citizens by such mixed commissions should
be accorded payment in full before anything was
paid upon the claims of any of the so-called peace
powers. Venezuela, on the other hand, insisted
that all her creditors should be paid upon a basis of
exact equality. During the efforts to adjust this
dispute it was suggested by the powers in interest
that it should be referred to me for decision, but I
was clearly of the opinion that a far wiser course
would be to submit the question to the Permanent
Court of Arbitration at The Hague. It seemed to
me to offer an admirable opportunity to advance the
practice of the peaceful settlement of disputes between
nations and to secure for The Hague Tribunal
a memorable increase of its practical importance.
The nations interested in the controversy were so
numerous, and in many instances so powerful, as to
make it evident that beneficent results would follow
from their appearance at the same time before the
bar of that august tribunal of peace.
Our hopes in that regard have been realized.
Russia and Austria are represented in the persons of
the learned and distinguished jurists who compose
the Tribunal, while Great Britain, Germany, France,
Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and
Norway, Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela
are represented by their respective agents and counsel.
Such an imposing concourse of nations presenting
their arguments to and invoking the decision of
that high court of international justice and international
peace can hardly fail to secure a like submission
of many future controversies. The nations now
appearing there will find it far easier to appear there
a second time, while no nation can imagine its just
pride will be lessened by following the example now
presented. This triumph of the principle of international
arbitration is a subject of warm congratulation
and offers a happy augury for the peace of
the world.
There seems good ground for the belief that there
has been a real growth among the civilized nations
of a sentiment which will permit a gradual substitution
of other methods than the method of war in
the settlement of disputes. It is not pretended that
as yet we are near a position in which it will be possible
wholly to prevent war, or that a just regard
for national interest and honor will in all cases permit
of the settlement of international disputes by
arbitration; but by a mixture of prudence and firmness
with wisdom we think it is possible to do away
with much of the provocation and excuse for war,
and at least in many cases to substitute some other
and more rational method for the settlement of disputes.
The Hague Court offers so good an example
of what can be done in the direction of such settlement
that it should be encouraged in every way.
Further steps should be taken. In President McKinley’s
annual Message of December 5, 1898, he
made the following recommendation:
“The experiences of the last year bring forcibly
home to us a sense of the burdens and the waste of
war. We desire, in common with most civilized
nations, to reduce to the lowest possible point the
damage sustained in time of war by peaceable trade
and commerce. It is true we may suffer in such
cases less than other communities, but all nations
are damaged more or less by the state of uneasiness
and apprehension into which an outbreak of hostilities
throws the entire commercial world. It should
be our object, therefore, to minimize, so far as practicable,
this inevitable loss and disturbance. This
purpose can probably best be accomplished by an
international agreement to regard all private property
at sea as exempt from capture or destruction
by the forces of belligerent powers. The United
States Government has for many years advocated
this humane and beneficent principle, and is now in
a position to recommend it to other powers without
the imputation of selfish motives. I therefore suggest
for your consideration that the Executive be
authorized to correspond with the governments of
the principal maritime powers with a view of incorporating
into the permanent law of civilized nations
the principle of the exemption of all private property
at sea, not contraband of war, from capture or destruction
by belligerent powers.”
I cordially renew this recommendation.
The Supreme Court, speaking on December 11,
1899, through Peckham, J., said:
“It is, we think, historically accurate to say that
this Government has always been, in its views,
among the most advanced of the governments of the
world in favor of mitigating, as to all non-combatants,
the hardships and horrors of war. To accomplish
that object it has always advocated those rules
which would in most cases do away with the right
to capture the private property of an enemy on the
high seas.”
I advocate this as a matter of humanity and
morals. It is anachronistic when private property
is respected on land that it should not be respected
at sea. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that
shipping represents, internationally speaking, a much
more generalized species of private property than
is the case with ordinary property on land—that is,
property found at sea is much less apt than is the
case with property found on land really to belong
to any one nation. Under the modern system of
corporate ownership the flag of a vessel often differs
from the flag which would mark the nationality of
the real ownership and money control of the vessel;
and the cargo may belong to individuals of yet a
different nationality. Much American capital is now
invested in foreign ships; and among foreign nations
it often happens that the capital of one is largely
invested in the shipping of another. Furthermore,
as a practical matter, it may be mentioned that
while commerce destroying may cause serious loss
and great annoyance, it can never be more than a
subsidiary factor in bringing to terms a resolute foe.
This is now well recognized by all of our naval experts.
The fighting ship, not the commerce destroyer,
is the vessel whose feats add renown to a
nation’s history, and establish her place among the
great powers of the world.
Last year the Interparliamentary Union for International
Arbitration met at Vienna, six hundred
members of the different legislatures of civilized
countries attending. It was provided that the next
meeting should be in 1904 at St. Louis, subject to
our Congress extending an invitation. Like The
Hague Tribunal, this Interparliamentary Union is
one of the forces tending toward peace among the
nations of the earth, and it is entitled to our support.
I trust the invitation can be extended.
Early in July, having received intelligence, which
happily turned out to be erroneous, of the assassination
of our vice-consul at Beirut, I despatched a
small squadron to that port for such service as
might be found necessary on arrival. Although the
attempt on the life of our vice-consul had not been
successful, yet the outrage was symptomatic of a
state of excitement and disorder which demanded
immediate attention. The arrival of the vessels
had the happiest result. A feeling of security at
once took the place of the former alarm and disquiet;
our officers were cordially welcomed by the
consular body and the leading merchants, and ordinary
business resumed its activity. The government
of the Sultan gave a considerate hearing to
the representations of our minister; the official who
was regarded as responsible for the disturbed condition
of affairs was removed. Our relations with the
Turkish Government remain friendly; our claims
founded on inequitable treatment of some of our
schools and missions appear to be in process of
amicable adjustment.
The signing of a new commercial treaty with
China, which took place at Shanghai on the 8th
of October, is a cause for satisfaction. This act,
the result of long discussion and negotiation, places
our commercial relations with the great Oriental
Empire on a more satisfactory footing than they
have ever heretofore enjoyed. It provides not only
for the ordinary rights and privileges of diplomatic
and consular officers, but also for an important extension
of our commerce by increased facility of
access to Chinese ports, and for the relief of trade
by the removal of some of the obstacles which have
embarrassed it in the past. The Chinese Government
engages, on fair and equitable conditions,
which will probably be accepted by the principal
commercial nations, to abandon the levy of “liken”
and other transit dues throughout the Empire, and
to introduce other desirable administrative reforms.
Larger facilities are to be given to our citizens
who desire to carry on mining enterprises in China.
We have secured for our missionaries a valuable
privilege, the recognition of their right to rent and
lease in perpetuity such property as their religious
societies may need in all parts of the Empire. And,
what was an indispensable condition for the advance
and development of our commerce in Manchuria,
China, by treaty with us, has opened to
foreign commerce the cities of Mukden, the capital
of the province of Manchuria, and Antung, an important
port on the Yalu River, on the road to Korea.
The full measure of development which our commerce
may rightfully expect can hardly be looked
for until the settlement of the present abnormal
state of things in the Empire; but the foundation
for such development has at last been laid.
I call your attention to the reduced cost in maintaining
the consular service for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1903, as shown in the annual report
of the Auditor for the State and other Departments,
as compared with the year previous. For the year
under consideration the excess of expenditures over
receipts on account of the consular service amounted
to $26,125.12, as against $96,972.50 for the year
ending June 30, 1902, and $147,040.16 for the
year ending June 30, 1901. This is the best showing
in this respect for the consular service for the
past fourteen years, and the reduction in the cost
of the service to the Government has been made in
spite of the fact that the expenditures for the year
in question were more than $20,000 greater than
for the previous year.
The rural free-delivery service has been steadily
extended. The attention of the Congress is asked
to the question of the compensation of the letter carriers
and clerks engaged in the postal service, especially
on the new rural free-delivery routes. More
routes have been installed since the first of July last
than in any like period in the Department’s history.
While a due regard to economy must be kept in
mind in the establishment of new routes, yet the
extension of the rural free-delivery system must
be continued, for reasons of sound public policy. No
governmental movement of recent years has resulted
in greater immediate benefit to the people of the
country districts. Rural free-delivery, taken in connection
with the telephone, the bicycle, and the
trolley, accomplishes much toward lessening the isolation
of farm life and making it brighter and more
attractive. In the immediate past the lack of just
such facilities as these has driven many of the more
active and restless young men and women from the
farms to the cities; for they rebelled at loneliness
and lack of mental companionship. It is unhealthy
and undesirable for the cities to grow at the expense
of the country; and rural free-delivery is not only a
good thing in itself, but is good because it is one
of the causes which check this unwholesome tendency
toward the urban concentration of our population
at the expense of the country districts. It
is for the same reason that we sympathize with and
approve of the policy of building good roads. The
movement for good roads is one fraught with the
greatest benefit to the country districts.
I trust that the Congress will continue to favor
in all proper ways the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.
This Exposition commemorates the Louisiana
Purchase, which was the first great step in the expansion
which made us a continental nation. The
expedition of Lewis and Clark across the continent
followed thereon, and marked the beginning of the
process of exploration and colonization which thrust
our national boundaries to the Pacific. The acquisition
of the Oregon country, including the present
States of Oregon and Washington, was a fact
of immense importance in our history; first giving
us our place on the Pacific seaboard, and making
ready the way for our ascendency in the commerce
of the greatest of the oceans. The centennial of our
establishment upon the western coast by the expedition
of Lewis and Clark is to be celebrated at Portland,
Oregon, by an exposition in the summer of
1905, and this event should receive recognition and
support from the National Government.
I call your special attention to the Territory of
Alaska. The country is developing rapidly, and it
has an assured future. The mineral wealth is great
and has as yet hardly been tapped. The fisheries,
if wisely handled and kept under national control,
will be a business as permanent as any other, and of
the utmost importance to the people. The forests
if properly guarded will form another great source
of wealth. Portions of Alaska are fitted for farming
and stock-raising, although the methods must be
adapted to the peculiar conditions of the country.
Alaska is situated in the far north; but so are Norway
and Sweden and Finland; and Alaska can
prosper and play its part in the New World just as
those nations have prospered and played their parts
in the Old World. Proper land laws should be
enacted; and the survey of the public lands immediately
begun. Coal-land laws should be provided
whereby the coal-land entryman may make his location
and secure patent under methods kindred to
those now prescribed for homestead and mineral
entrymen. Salmon hatcheries, exclusively under
government control, should be established. The
cable should be extended from Sitka westward.
Wagon roads and trails should be built, and the
building of railroads promoted in all legitimate
ways. Light-houses should be built along the coast.
Attention should be paid to the needs of the Alaska
Indians; provision should be made for an officer,
with deputies, to study their needs, relieve their
immediate wants, and help them adapt themselves
to the new conditions.
The commission appointed to investigate, during
the season of 1903, the condition and needs of the
Alaskan salmon fisheries, has finished its work in the
field, and is preparing a detailed report thereon. A
preliminary report reciting the measures immediately
required for the protection and preservation of the
salmon industry has already been submitted to the
Secretary of Commerce and Labor for his attention
and for the needed action.
I recommend that an appropriation be made for
building light-houses in Hawaii, and taking possession
of those already built. The Territory should
be reimbursed for whatever amounts it has already
expended for light-houses. The Governor should be
empowered to suspend or remove any official appointed
by him, without submitting the matter to
the legislature.
Of our insular possessions, the Philippines and
Porto Rico, it is gratifying to say that their steady
progress has been such as to make it unnecessary to
spend much time in discussing them. Yet the Congress
should ever keep in mind that a peculiar obligation
rests upon us to further in every way the
welfare of these communities. The Philippines
should be knit closer to us by tariff arrangements.
It would, of course, be impossible suddenly to raise
the people of the islands to the high pitch of industrial
prosperity and of governmental efficiency to
which they will in the end by degrees attain; and the
caution and moderation shown in developing them
have been among the main reasons why this development
has hitherto gone on so smoothly.
Scrupulous care has been taken in the choice
of governmental agents, and the entire elimination
of partisan politics from the public service.
The condition of the islanders is in material things
far better than ever before, while their governmental,
intellectual, and moral advance has kept
pace with their material advance. No one people
ever benefited another people more than we have
benefited the Filipinos by taking possession of the
islands.
The cash receipts of the General Land Office for
the last fiscal year were $11,024,743.65, an increase
of $4,762,816.47 over the preceding year. Of this
sum, approximately, $8,461,493 will go to the
credit of the fund for the reclamation of arid land,
making the total of this fund, up to the 30th of
June, 1903, approximately, $16,191,836.
A gratifying disposition has been evinced by those
having unlawful inclosures of public land to remove
their fences. Nearly two million acres so inclosed
have been thrown open on demand. In but comparatively
few cases has it been necessary to go into
court to accomplish this purpose. This work will
be vigorously prosecuted until all unlawful inclosures
have been removed.
Experience has shown that in the Western States
themselves, as well as in the rest of the country, there
is widespread conviction that certain of the public-land
laws and the resulting administrative practice
no longer meet the present needs. The character
and uses of the remaining public lands differ widely
from those of the public lands which Congress had
especially in view when these laws were passed. The
rapidly increasing rate of disposal of the public lands
is not followed by a corresponding increase in home
building. There is a tendency to mass in large holdings
public lands, especially timber and grazing lands,
and thereby to retard settlement. I renew and emphasize
my recommendation of last year that so far
as they are available for agriculture in its broadest
sense, and to whatever extent they may be reclaimed
under the national irrigation law, the remaining
public lands should be held rigidly for the home
builder. The attention of the Congress is especially
directed to the timber and stone law, the desert-land
law, and the commutation clause of the homestead
law, which in their operation have in many
respects conflicted with wise public-land policy. The
discussions in the Congress and elsewhere have made
it evident that there is a wide divergence of opinions
between those holding opposite views on these subjects;
and that the opposing sides have strong and
convinced representatives of weight both within and
without the Congress; the differences being not only
as to matters of opinion but as to matters of fact.
In order that definite information may be available
for the use of the Congress, I have appointed a
commission composed of W. A. Richards, Commissioner
of the General Land Office; Gifford Pinchot,
Chief of the Bureau of Forestry of the Department
of Agriculture, and F. H. Newell, Chief
Hydrographer of the Geological Survey, to report
at the earliest practicable moment upon the condition,
operation, and effect of the present land laws
and on the use, condition, disposal, and settlement
of the public lands. The commission will report
especially what changes in organization, laws, regulations,
and practice affecting the public lands are
needed to effect the largest practicable disposition
of the public lands to actual settlers who will build
permanent homes upon them, and to secure in permanence
the fullest and most effective use of the resources
of the public lands; and it will make such
other reports and recommendations as its study of
these questions may suggest. The commission is to
report immediately upon those points concerning
which its judgment is clear; on any point upon
which it has doubt it will take the time necessary to
make investigation and reach a final judgment.
The work of reclamation of the arid lands of the
West is progressing steadily and satisfactorily under
the terms of the law setting aside the proceeds from
the disposal of public lands. The corps of engineers
known as the Reclamation Service, which is
conducting the surveys and examinations, has been
thoroughly organized, especial pains being taken to
secure under the civil-service rules a body of skilled,
experienced, and efficient men. Surveys and examinations
are progressing throughout the arid States
and Territories, plans for reclaiming works being
prepared and passed upon by boards of engineers before
approval by the Secretary of the Interior. In
Arizona and Nevada, in localities where such work is
pre-eminently needed, construction has already been
begun. In other parts of the arid West various projects
are well advanced toward the drawing up of
contracts, these being delayed in part by necessities
of reaching agreements or understanding as regards
rights of way or acquisition of real estate. Most
of the works contemplated for construction are of
national importance, involving interstate questions
or the securing of stable, self-supporting communities
in the midst of vast tracts of vacant land. The
Nation as a whole is of course the gainer by the
creation of these homes, adding as they do to the
wealth and stability of the country, and furnishing a
home market for the products of the East and South.
The reclamation law, while perhaps not ideal, appears
at present to answer the larger needs for
which it is designed. Further legislation is not
recommended until the necessities of change are
more apparent.
The study of the opportunities of reclamation of
the vast extent of arid land shows that whether this
reclamation is done by individuals, corporations, or
the State, the sources of water supply must be effectively
protected and the reservoirs guarded by the
preservation of the forests at the headwaters of the
streams. The engineers making the preliminary examinations
continually emphasize this need and urge
that the remaining public lands at the headwaters of
the important streams of the West be reserved to insure
permanency of water supply for irrigation.
Much progress in forestry has been made during the
past year. The necessity for perpetuating our forest
resources, whether in public or private hands, is recognized
now as never before. The demand for forest
reserves has become insistent in the West, because the
West must use the water, wood, and summer range
which only such reserves can supply. Progressive
lumbermen are striving, through forestry, to give
their business permanence. Other great business interests
are awakening to the need of forest preservation
as a business matter. The Government’s forest
work should receive from the Congress hearty support,
and especially support adequate for the protection
of the forest reserves against fire. The forest reserve
policy of the Government has passed
beyond the experimental stage and has reached a
condition where scientific methods are essential to its
successful prosecution. The administration features
of forest reserves are at present unsatisfactory, being
divided between three Bureaus of two Departments.
It is therefore recommended that all matters pertaining
to forest reserves, except those involving
or pertaining to land titles, be consolidated in
the Bureau of Forestry of the Department of
Agriculture.
The cotton-growing States have recently been invaded
by a weevil that has done much damage and
threatens the entire cotton industry. I suggest to
the Congress the prompt enactment of such remedial
legislation as its judgment may approve.
In granting patents to foreigners the proper course
for this country to follow is to give the same advantages
to foreigners here that the countries in which
these foreigners dwell extend in return to our citizens;
that is, to extend the benefits of our patent
laws on inventions and the like where in return the
articles would be patentable in the foreign countries
concerned—where an American could get a corresponding
patent in such countries.
The Indian agents should not be dependent for
their appointment or tenure of office upon considerations
of partisan politics; the practice of appointing,
when possible, ex-army officers or bonded superintendents
to the vacancies that occur is working well.
Attention is invited to the widespread illiteracy due
to lack of public schools in the Indian Territory.
Prompt heed should be paid to the need of education
for the children in this Territory.
In my last annual Message the attention of the
Congress was called to the necessity of enlarging the
safety-appliance law, and it is gratifying to note that
this law was amended in important respects. With
the increasing railway mileage of the country, the
greater number of men employed, and the use of
larger and heavier equipment, the urgency for renewed
effort to prevent the loss of life and limb
upon the railroads of the country, particularly to
employees, is apparent. For the inspection of water
craft and the Life-Saving Service upon the water the
Congress has built up an elaborate body of protective
legislation and a thorough method of inspection
and is annually spending large sums of money. It is
encouraging to observe that the Congress is alive to
the interests of those who are employed upon our
wonderful arteries of commerce—the railroads—who
so safely transport millions of passengers and
billions of tons of freight. The Federal inspection
of safety appliances, for which the Congress is now
making appropriations, is a service analogous to
that which the Government has upheld for generations
in regard to vessels, and it is believed will prove
of great practical benefit, both to railroad employees
and the traveling public. As the greater part of
commerce is interstate and exclusively under the
control of the Congress the needed safety and uniformity
must be secured by national legislation.
No other class of our citizens deserves so well of
the Nation as those to whom the Nation owes its
very being, the veterans of the Civil War. Special
attention is asked to the excellent work of the Pension
Bureau in expediting and disposing of pension
claims. During the fiscal year ending July 1, 1903,
the Bureau settled 251,982 claims, an average of 825
claims for each working day of the year. The number
of settlements since July 1, 1903, has been in
excess of last year’s average, approaching 1,000
claims for each working day, and it is believed that
the work of the Bureau will be current at the close
of the present fiscal year.
During the year ended June 30 last 25,566 persons
were appointed through competitive examinations
under the civil-service rules. This was 12,672 more
than during the preceding year, and 40 per cent of
those who passed the examinations. This abnormal
growth was largely occasioned by the extension of
classification to the rural free-delivery service and
the appointment last year of over 9,000 rural carriers.
A revision of the civil-service rules took effect
on April 15 last, which has greatly improved their
operation. The completion of the reform of the
civil service is recognized by good citizens everywhere
as a matter of the highest public importance,
and the success of the merit system largely depends
upon the effectiveness of the rules and the machinery
provided for their enforcement. A very gratifying
spirit of friendly co-operation exists in all the Departments
of the Government in the enforcement and
uniform observance of both the letter and spirit of
the civil-service act. Executive orders of July 3,
1902, March 26, 1903, and July 8, 1903, require
that appointments of all unclassified laborers, both
in the Departments at Washington and in the field
service, shall be made with the assistance of the
United States Civil Service Commission, under a
system of registration to test the relative fitness of
applicants for appointment or employment. This
system is competitive, and is open to all citizens of
the United States qualified in respect to age, physical
ability, moral character, industry, and adaptability
for manual labor; except that in case of veterans
of the Civil War the element of age is omitted.
This system of appointment is distinct from the classified
service and does not classify positions of mere
laborer under the civil-service act and rules. Regulations
in aid thereof have been put in operation in
several of the Departments and are being gradually
extended in other parts of the service. The results
have been very satisfactory, as extravagance has
been checked by decreasing the number of unnecessary
positions and by increasing the efficiency of the
employees remaining.
The Congress, as the result of a thorough investigation
of the charities and reformatory institutions
in the District of Columbia, by a joint select committee
of the two Houses which made its report in
March, 1898, created in the act approved June 6,
1900, a board of charities for the District of Columbia,
to consist of five residents of the District,
appointed by the President of the United States,
by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,
each for a term of three years, to serve without compensation.
President McKinley appointed five men
who had been active and prominent in the public
charities of Washington, all of whom upon taking
office July 1, 1900, resigned from the different charities
with which they had been connected. The members
of the board have been reappointed in successive
years. The board serves under the Commissioners
of the District of Columbia. The board gave its first
year to a careful and impartial study of the special
problems before it, and has continued that study
every year in the light of the best practice in public
charities elsewhere. Its recommendations in its annual
reports to the Congress through the Commissions
of the District of Columbia “for the economical
and efficient administration of the charities and reformatories
of the District of Columbia,” as required
by the act creating it, have been based upon
the principles commended by the joint select committee
of the Congress in its report of March, 1898,
and approved by the best administrators of public
charities, and make for the desired systematization
and improvement of the affairs under its supervision.
They are worthy of favorable consideration by the
Congress.
The effect of the laws providing a General Staff
for the army and for the more effective use of the
National Guard has been excellent. Great improvement
has been made in the efficiency of our army
in recent years. Such schools as those erected at
Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley and the institution
of fall manœuvre work accomplish satisfactory
results. The good effect of these manœuvres upon
the National Guard is marked, and ample appropriation
should be made to enable the guardsmen
of the several States to share in the benefit. The
Government should as soon as possible secure suitable
permanent camp sites for military manœuvres
in the various sections of the country. The service
thereby rendered not only to the Regular Army,
but to the National Guard of the several States,
will be so great as to repay many times over the
relatively small expense. We should not rest satisfied
with what has been done, however. The
only people who are contented with a system of promotion
by mere seniority are those who are contented
with the triumph of mediocrity over excellence.
On the other hand a system which encouraged
the exercise of social or political favoritism in
promotions would be even worse. But it would surely
be easy to devise a method of promotion from
grade to grade in which the opinion of the higher
officers of the service upon the candidates should be
decisive upon the standing and promotion of the latter.
Just such a system now obtains at West Point.
The quality of each year’s work determines the
standing of that year’s class, the man being dropped
or graduated into the next class in the relative position
which his military superiors decide to be
warranted by his merit. In other words, ability,
energy, fidelity, and all other similar qualities determine
the rank of a man year after year in West
Point, and his standing in the army when he graduates
from West Point; but from that time on, all
effort to find which man is best or worst, and
reward or punish him accordingly, is abandoned;
no brilliancy, no amount of hard work, no eagerness
in the performance of duty, can advance him, and
no slackness or indifference that falls short of a
court-martial offence can retard him. Until this
system is changed we can not hope that our officers
will be of as high grade as we have a right to expect,
considering the material upon which we draw.
Moreover, when a man renders such service as
Captain Pershing rendered last spring in the Moro
campaign, it ought to be possible to reward him
without at once jumping him to the grade of brigadier-general.
Shortly after the enunciation of that famous
principle of American foreign policy now known
as the “Monroe Doctrine,” President Monroe, in a
special Message to Congress on January 30, 1824,
spoke as follows: “The navy is the arm from which
our Government will always derive most aid in
support of our ... rights. Every power engaged
in war will know the strength of our naval
power, the number of our ships of each class, their
condition, and the promptitude with which we may
bring them into service, and will pay due consideration
to that argument.”
I heartily congratulate the Congress upon the
steady progress in building up the American Navy.
We can not afford a let-up in this great work. To
stand still means to go back. There should be no
cessation in adding to the effective units of the
fighting strength of the fleet. Meanwhile the Navy
Department and the officers of the navy are doing
well their part by providing constant service at sea
under conditions akin to those of actual warfare.
Our officers and enlisted men are learning to handle
the battleships, cruisers, and torpedo boats with
high efficiency in fleet and squadron formations,
and the standard of marksmanship is being steadily
raised. The best work ashore is indispensable, but
the highest duty of a naval officer is to exercise
command at sea.
The establishment of a naval base in the Philippines
ought not to be longer postponed. Such a
base is desirable in time of peace; in time of war
it would be indispensable, and its lack would be
ruinous. Without it our fleet would be helpless.
Our naval experts are agreed that Subig Bay is the
proper place for the purpose. The national interests
require that the work of fortification and development
of a naval station at Subig Bay be begun
at an early date; for under the best conditions it
is a work which will consume much time.
It is eminently desirable, however, that there
should be provided a naval general staff on lines
similar to those of the General Staff lately created
for the army. Within the Navy Department itself
the needs of the service have brought about a system
under which the duties of a general staff are
partially performed; for the Bureau of Navigation
has under its direction the War College, the Office
of Naval Intelligence, and the Board of Inspection,
and has been in close touch with the General Board
of the navy. But though under the excellent officers
at their head these boards and bureaus do
good work, they have not the authority of a general
staff, and have not sufficient scope to ensure a proper
readiness for emergencies. We need the establishment
by law of a body of trained officers, who
shall exercise a systematic control of the military
affairs of the navy, and be authorized advisers of
the Secretary concerning it.
By the act of June 28, 1902, the Congress authorized
the President to enter into treaty with
Colombia for the building of the canal across the
Isthmus of Panama; it being provided that in the
event of failure to secure such treaty after the lapse
of a reasonable time, recourse should be had to
building a canal through Nicaragua. It has not
been necessary to consider this alternative, as I am
enabled to lay before the Senate a treaty providing
for the building of the canal across the Isthmus
of Panama. This was the route which commended
itself to the deliberate judgment of the Congress,
and we can now acquire by treaty the right to construct
the canal over this route. The question now,
therefore, is not by which route the Isthmian Canal
shall be built, for that question has been definitely
and irrevocably decided. The question is simply
whether or not we shall have an Isthmian Canal.
When the Congress directed that we should take
the Panama route under treaty with Colombia, the
essence of the condition, of course, referred not to
the government which controlled that route, but
to the route itself; to the territory across which
the route lay, not to the name which for the moment
the territory bore on the map. The purpose
of the law was to authorize the President to make
a treaty with the power in actual control of the
Isthmus of Panama. This purpose has been fulfilled.
In the year 1846 this Government entered into a
treaty with New Granada, the predecessor upon the
Isthmus of the Republic of Colombia and of the
present Republic of Panama, by which treaty it
was provided that the Government and citizens of
the United States should always have free and open
right of way or transit across the Isthmus of Panama
by any modes of communication that might
be constructed, while in return our Government
guaranteed the perfect neutrality of the above-mentioned
Isthmus with the view that the free transit
from the one to the other sea might not be interrupted
or embarrassed. The treaty vested in the
United States a substantial property right carved
out of the rights of sovereignty and property which
New Granada then had and possessed over the said
territory. The name of New Granada has passed
away and its territory has been divided. Its successor,
the Government of Colombia, has ceased to
own any property in the Isthmus. A new republic,
that of Panama, which was at one time a sovereign
state, and at another time a mere department of the
successive confederations known as New Granada
and Colombia, has now succeeded to the rights
which first one and then the other formerly exercised
over the Isthmus. But as long as the Isthmus
endures, the mere geographical fact of its existence,
and the peculiar interest therein which is required
by our position, perpetuate the solemn contract
which binds the holders of the territory to respect
our right to freedom of transit across it, and binds
us in return to safeguard for the Isthmus and the
world the exercise of that inestimable privilege.
The true interpretation of the obligations upon
which the United States entered in this treaty of
1846 has been given repeatedly in the utterances
of Presidents and Secretaries of State. Secretary
Cass in 1858 officially stated the position of this
Government as follows:
“The progress of events has rendered the interoceanic
route across the narrow portion of Central
America vastly important to the commercial world,
and especially to the United States, whose possessions
extend along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts,
and demand the speediest and easiest modes of communication.
While the rights of sovereignty of
the states occupying this region should always be
respected, we shall expect that these rights be exercised
in a spirit befitting the occasion and the wants
and circumstances that have arisen. Sovereignty
has its duties as well as its rights, and none of
these local governments, even if administered with
more regard to the just demands of other nations
than they have been, would be permitted, in a spirit
of Eastern isolation, to close the gates of intercourse
on the great highways of the world, and
justify the act by the pretension that these avenues
of trade and travel belong to them and that they
choose to shut them, or, what is almost equivalent,
to encumber them with such unjust relations as
would prevent their general use.”
Seven years later, in 1865, Mr. Seward in different
communications took the following position:
“The United States have taken and will take no
interest in any question of internal revolution in the
State of Panama, or any State of the United States
of Colombia, but will maintain a perfect neutrality
in connection with such domestic altercations. The
United States will, nevertheless, hold themselves
ready to protect the transit trade across the Isthmus
against invasion of either domestic or foreign disturbers
of the peace of the State of Panama....
Neither the text nor the spirit of the stipulation in
that article by which the United States engages to
preserve the neutrality of the Isthmus of Panama,
imposes an obligation on this Government to comply
with the requisition [of the President of the United
States of Colombia for a force to protect the Isthmus
of Panama from a body of insurgents of that
country]. The purpose of the stipulation was to
guarantee the Isthmus against seizure or invasion
by a foreign power only.”
Attorney-General Speed, under date of November
7, 1865, advised Secretary Seward as follows:
“From this treaty it can not be supposed that
New Granada invited the United States to become
a party to the intestine troubles of that government,
nor did the United States become bound to take
sides in the domestic broils of New Granada. The
United States did guarantee New Granada in the
sovereignty and property over the territory. This
was as against other and foreign governments.”
For four hundred years, ever since shortly after
the discovery of this hemisphere, the canal across
the Isthmus has been planned. For two score years
it has been worked at. When made it is to last for
the ages. It is to alter the geography of a continent
and the trade routes of the world. We have
shown by every treaty we have negotiated or attempted
to negotiate with the peoples in control of
the Isthmus and with foreign nations in reference
thereto our consistent good faith in observing our
obligations; on the one hand to the peoples of the
Isthmus, and on the other hand to the civilized world
whose commercial rights we are safeguarding and
guaranteeing by our action. We have done our duty
to others in letter and in spirit, and we have shown
the utmost forbearance in exacting our own rights.
Last spring, under the act above referred to, a
treaty concluded between the representatives of the
Republic of Colombia and of our Government was
ratified by the Senate. This treaty was entered into
at the urgent solicitation of the people of Colombia
and after a body of experts appointed by our Government
especially to go into the matter of the routes
across the Isthmus had pronounced unanimously in
favor of the Panama route. In drawing up this
treaty every concession was made to the people and
to the Government of Colombia. We were more
than just in dealing with them. Our generosity was
such as to make it a serious question whether we had
not gone too far in their interest at the expense of
our own; for in our scrupulous desire to pay all
possible heed, not merely to the real but even to the
fancied rights of our weaker neighbor, who already
owed so much to our protection and forbearance, we
yielded in all possible ways to her desires in drawing
up the treaty. Nevertheless the Government of Colombia
not merely repudiated the treaty, but repudiated
it in such manner as to make it evident by
the time the Colombian Congress adjourned that not
the scantiest hope remained of ever getting a satisfactory
treaty from them. The Government of Colombia
made the treaty, and yet when the Colombian
Congress was called to ratify it the vote against
ratification was unanimous. It does not appear that
the government made any real effort to secure ratification.
Immediately after the adjournment of the Congress
a revolution broke out in Panama. The people
of Panama had long been discontented with the Republic
of Colombia, and they had been kept quiet
only by the prospect of the conclusion of the treaty,
which was to them a matter of vital concern. When
it became evident that the treaty was hopelessly lost,
the people of Panama rose literally as one man. Not
a shot was fired by a single man on the Isthmus in
the interest of the Colombian Government. Not a
life was lost in the accomplishment of the revolution.
The Colombian troops stationed on the Isthmus, who
had long been unpaid, made common cause with the
people of Panama, and with astonishing unanimity
the new republic was started. The duty of the
United States in the premises was clear. In strict
accordance with the principles laid down by Secretaries
Cass and Seward in the official documents
above quoted, the United States gave notice that it
would permit the landing of no expeditionary force,
the arrival of which would mean chaos and destruction
along the line of the railroad and of the proposed
canal, and an interruption of transit as an inevitable
consequence. The de facto Government of
Panama was recognized in the following telegram
to Mr. Ehrman:
“The people of Panama have, by apparently unanimous
movement, dissolved their political connection
with the Republic of Colombia and resumed their
independence. When you are satisfied that a de
facto government, republican in form and without
substantial opposition from its own people, has been
established in the State of Panama, you will enter
into relations with it as the responsible government
of the territory and look to it for all due action to
protect the persons and property of citizens of the
United States and to keep open the isthmian transit,
in accordance with the obligations of existing treaties
governing the relations of the United States to
that territory.”
The Government of Colombia was notified of our
action by the following telegram to Mr. Beaupré:
“The people of Panama having, by an apparently
unanimous movement, dissolved their political connection
with the Republic of Colombia and resumed
their independence, and having adopted a government
of their own, republican in form, with which
the Government of the United States of America has
entered into relations, the President of the United
States, in accordance with the ties of friendship
which have so long and so happily existed between
the respective nations, most earnestly commends to
the Governments of Colombia and of Panama the
peaceful and equitable settlement of all questions at
issue between them. He holds that he is bound not
merely by treaty obligations, but by the interests of
civilization, to see that the peaceful traffic of the
world across the Isthmus of Panama shall not longer
be disturbed by a constant succession of unnecessary
and wasteful wars.”
When these events happened, fifty-seven years had
elapsed since the United States had entered into its
treaty with New Granada. During that time the
Governments of New Granada and of its successor,
Colombia, have been in a constant state of flux. The
following is a partial list of the disturbances on the
Isthmus of Panama during the period in question, as
reported to us by our consuls. It is not possible to
give a complete list, and some of the reports that
speak of “revolutions” must mean unsuccessful revolutions.
May 22, 1850.—Outbreak; two Americans killed.
War vessel demanded to quell outbreak.
October, 1850.—Revolutionary plot to bring
about independence of the Isthmus.
July 22, 1851.—Revolution in four Southern
provinces.
November 14, 1851.—Outbreak at Chagres. Man-of-war
requested for Chagres.
June 27, 1853.—Insurrection at Bogota, and consequent
disturbance on Isthmus. War vessel demanded.
May 23, 1854.—Political disturbances; war vessel
requested.
June 28, 1854.—Attempted revolution.
October 24, 1854.—Independence of Isthmus demanded
by provincial legislature.
April, 1856.—Riot, and massacre of Americans.
May 4, 1856.—Riot.
May 18, 1856.—Riot.
June 3, 1856.—Riot.
October 2, 1856.—Conflict between two native
parties. United States forces landed.
December 18, 1858.—Attempted secession of
Panama.
April, 1859.—Riots.
September, 1860.—Outbreak.
October 4, 1860.—Landing of United States
forces in consequence.
May 23, 1861.—Intervention of the United States
forces required, by intendente.
October 2, 1861.—Insurrection and civil war.
April 4, 1862.—Measures to prevent rebels crossing
Isthmus.
June 13, 1862.—Mosquera’s troops refused admittance
to Panama.
March, 1865.—Revolution, and United States
troops landed.
August, 1865.—Riots; unsuccessful attempt to
invade Panama.
March, 1866.—Unsuccessful revolution.
April, 1867.—Attempt to overthrow Government.
August, 1867.—Attempt at revolution.
July 5, 1868.—Revolution; provisional government
inaugurated.
August 29, 1868.—Revolution; provisional government
overthrown.
April, 1871.—Revolution; followed apparently by
counter revolution.
April, 1873.—Revolution and civil war which
lasted to October, 1875.
August, 1876.—Civil war which lasted until April,
1877.
July, 1878.—Rebellion.
December, 1878.—Revolt.
April, 1879.—Revolution.
June, 1879.—Revolution.
March, 1883.—Riot.
May, 1883.—Riot.
June, 1884.—Revolutionary attempt.
December, 1884.—Revolutionary attempt.
January, 1885.—Revolutionary disturbances.
March, 1885.—Revolution.
April, 1887.—Disturbance on Panama Railroad.
November, 1887.—Disturbance on line of canal.
January, 1889.—Riot.
January, 1895.—Revolution which lasted until
April.
March, 1895.—Incendiary attempt.
October, 1899.—Revolution.
February, 1900, to July, 1900.—Revolution.
January, 1901.—Revolution.
July, 1901.—Revolutionary disturbances.
September, 1901.—City of Colon taken by rebels.
March, 1902.—Revolutionary disturbances.
July, 1902.—Revolution.
The above is only a partial list of the revolutions,
rebellions, insurrections, riots, and other outbreaks
that have occurred during the period in question;
yet they number 53 for the 57 years. It will be
noted that one of them lasted for nearly three years
before it was quelled; another for nearly a year.
In short, the experience of over half a century has
shown Colombia to be utterly incapable of keeping
order on the Isthmus. Only the active interference
of the United States has enabled her to preserve so
much as a semblance of sovereignty. Had it not
been for the exercise by the United States of the
police power in her interest, her connection with the
Isthmus would have been sundered long ago. In
1856, in 1860, in 1873, in 1885, in 1901, and again
in 1902, sailors and marines from United States
warships were forced to land in order to patrol the
Isthmus, to protect life and property, and to see that
the transit across the Isthmus was kept open. In
1861, in 1862, in 1885, and in 1900, the Colombian
Government asked that the United States Government
would land troops to protect its interests and
maintain order on the Isthmus. Perhaps the most
extraordinary request is that which has just been
received and which runs as follows:
“Knowing that revolution has already commenced
in Panama [an eminent Colombian] says that if the
Government of the United States will land troops
to preserve Colombian sovereignty, and the transit,
if requested by Colombian chargé d’affaires, this
government will declare martial law; and, by virtue
of vested constitutional authority, when public order
is disturbed, will approve by decree the ratification
of the canal treaty as signed; or, if the Government
of the United States prefers, will call extra
session of the Congress—with new and friendly
members—next May to approve the treaty. [An
eminent Colombian] has the perfect confidence of
vice-president, he says, and if it became necessary
will go to the Isthmus or send representative there
to adjust matters along above lines to the satisfaction
of the people there.”
This despatch is noteworthy from two standpoints.
Its offer of immediately guaranteeing the treaty to
us is in sharp contrast with the positive and contemptuous
refusal of the Congress which has just
closed its sessions to consider favorably such a
treaty; it shows that the government which made
the treaty really had absolute control over the situation,
but did not choose to exercise this control. The
despatch further calls on us to restore order and
secure Colombian supremacy in the Isthmus from
which the Colombian Government has just by its
action decided to bar us by preventing the construction
of the canal.
The control, in the interest of the commerce and
traffic of the whole civilized world, of the means of
undisturbed transit across the Isthmus of Panama
has become of transcendent importance to the United
States. We have repeatedly exercised this control
by intervening in the course of domestic dissension,
and by protecting the territory from foreign invasion.
In 1853 Mr. Everett assured the Peruvian
minister that we should not hesitate to maintain the
neutrality of the Isthmus in the case of war between
Peru and Colombia. In 1864 Colombia, which has
always been vigilant to avail itself of its privileges
conferred by the treaty, expressed its expectation
that in the event of war between Peru and Spain the
United States would carry into effect the guarantee
of neutrality. There have been few administrations
of the State Department in which this treaty has
not, either by the one side or the other, been used
as a basis of more or less important demands. It
was said by Mr. Fish in 1871 that the Department
of State had reason to believe that an attack upon
Colombian sovereignty on the Isthmus had, on several
occasions, been averted by warning from this
Government. In 1886, when Colombia was under
the menace of hostilities from Italy in the Cerruti
case, Mr. Bayard expressed the serious concern that
the United States could not but feel, that a European
power should resort to force against a sister republic
of this hemisphere, as to the sovereign and uninterrupted
use of a part of whose territory we are guarantors
under the solemn faith of a treaty.
The above recital of facts establishes beyond question:
First, that the United States has for over half
a century patiently and in good faith carried out its
obligations under the treaty of 1846; second, that
when for the first time it became possible for Colombia
to do anything in requital of the services thus
repeatedly rendered to it for fifty-seven years by the
United States, the Colombian Government peremptorily
and offensively refused thus to do its part,
even though to do so would have been to its advantage
and immeasurably to the advantage of the State
of Panama, at that time under its jurisdiction; third,
that throughout this period revolutions, riots, and
factional disturbances of every kind have occurred
one after the other in almost uninterrupted succession,
some of them lasting for months and even for
years, while the central government was unable to
put them down or to make peace with the rebels;
fourth, that these disturbances instead of showing
any sign of abating have tended to grow more numerous
and more serious in the immediate past;
fifth, that the control of Colombia over the Isthmus
of Panama could not be maintained without the
armed intervention and assistance of the United
States. In other words, the Government of Colombia,
though wholly unable to maintain order on
the Isthmus, has nevertheless declined to ratify a
treaty the conclusion of which opened the only
chance to secure its own stability and to guarantee
permanent peace on, and the construction of a canal
across, the Isthmus.
Under such circumstances, the Government of the
United States would have been guilty of folly and
weakness, amounting in their sum to a crime against
the Nation, had it acted otherwise than it did when
the revolution of November 3 last took place in
Panama. This great enterprise of building the interoceanic
canal can not be held up to gratify the
whims, or out of respect to the governmental impotence,
or to the even more sinister and evil political
peculiarities, of people who, though they dwell afar
off, yet, against the wish of the actual dwellers on
the Isthmus, assert an unreal supremacy over the
territory. The possession of a territory fraught
with such peculiar capacities as the Isthmus in question
carries with it obligations to mankind. The
course of events has shown that this canal can not
be built by private enterprise, or by any other nation
than our own; therefore it must be built by the
United States.
Every effort has been made by the Government of
the United States to persuade Colombia to follow a
course which was essentially not only to our interests
and to the interests of the world, but to the
interests of Colombia itself. These efforts have
failed; and Colombia, by her persistence in repulsing
the advances that have been made, has forced us, for
the sake of our own honor, and of the interest and
well-being, not merely of our own people, but of the
people of the Isthmus of Panama and the people of
the civilized countries of the world, to take decisive
steps to bring to an end a condition of affairs which
had become intolerable. The new Republic of Panama
immediately offered to negotiate a treaty with
us. This treaty I herewith submit. By it our interests
are better safeguarded than in the treaty with
Colombia which was ratified by the Senate at its
last session. It is better in its terms than the treaties
offered to us by the Republics of Nicaragua and
Costa Rica. At last the right to begin this great
undertaking is made available. Panama has done
her part. All that remains is for the American Congress
to do its part and forthwith this Republic will
enter upon the execution of a project colossal in its
size and of wellnigh incalculable possibilities for the
good of this country and the nations of mankind.
By the provisions of the treaty the United States
guarantees and will maintain the independence of the
Republic of Panama. There is granted to the United
States in perpetuity the use, occupation, and control
of a strip ten miles wide and extending three nautical
miles into the sea at either terminal, with all
lands lying outside of the zone necessary for the
construction of the canal or for its auxiliary works,
and with the islands in the Bay of Panama. The
cities of Panama and Colon are not embraced in the
canal zone, but the United States assumes their
sanitation and, in case of need, the maintenance of
order therein; the United States enjoys within the
granted limits all the rights, power, and authority
which it would possess were it the sovereign of the
territory to the exclusion of the exercise of sovereign
rights by the republic. All railway and canal property
rights belonging to Panama and needed for the
canal pass to the United States, including any property
of the respective companies in the cities of
Panama and Colon; the works, property, and personnel
of the canal and railways are exempted from taxation
as well in the cities of Panama and Colon as
in the canal zone and its dependencies. Free immigration
of the personnel and importation of supplies
for the construction and operation of the canal
are granted. Provision is made for the use of military
force and the building of fortifications by the
United States for the protection of the transit. In
other details, particularly as to the acquisition of the
interests of the New Panama Canal Company and
the Panama Railway by the United States and the
condemnation of private property for the uses of the
canal, the stipulations of the Hay-Herran treaty are
closely followed, while the compensation to be given
for these enlarged grants remains the same, being
ten millions of dollars payable on exchange of ratifications;
and, beginning nine years from that date, an
annual payment of $250,000 during the life of the
convention.
Theodore Roosevelt.
White House,
December 7, 1903.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
I lay before the Congress for its information a
statement of my action up to this time in executing
the act entitled “An act to provide for the construction
of a canal connecting the waters of the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans,” approved June 28, 1902.
By the said act the President was authorized to
secure for the United States the property of the
Panama Canal Company and the perpetual control
of a strip six miles wide across the Isthmus of
Panama. It was further provided that “should the
President be unable to obtain for the United States
a satisfactory title to the property of the New
Panama Canal Company and the control of the
necessary territory of the Republic of Colombia ...
within a reasonable time and upon reasonable terms,
then the President” should endeavor to provide for
a canal by the Nicaragua route. The language
quoted defines with exactness and precision what
was to be done, and what as a matter of fact has
been done. The President was authorized to go to
the Nicaragua route only if within a reasonable
time he could not obtain “control of the necessary
territory of the Republic of Colombia.” This control
has now been obtained; the provision of the act
has been complied with; it is no longer possible
under existing legislation to go to the Nicaragua
route as an alternative.
This act marked the climax of the effort on
the part of the United States to secure, so far as
legislation was concerned, an interoceanic canal
across the Isthmus. The effort to secure a treaty
for this purpose with one of the Central American
republics did not stand on the same footing with
the effort to secure a treaty under any ordinary conditions.
The proper position for the United States
to assume in reference to this canal, and therefore
to the governments of the Isthmus, had been clearly
set forth by Secretary Cass in 1858. In my Annual
Message I have already quoted what Secretary Cass
said; but I repeat the quotation here, because the
principle it states is fundamental:
While the rights of sovereignty of the States occupying
this region (Central America) should always
be respected, we shall expect that these rights
be exercised in a spirit befitting the occasion and the
wants and circumstances that have arisen. Sovereignty
has its duties as well as its rights, and none
of these local governments, even if administered
with more regard to the just demands of other nations
than they have been, would be permitted, in a
spirit of Eastern isolation, to close the gates of intercourse
on the great highways of the world, and
justify the act by the pretension that these avenues
of trade and travel belong to them and that they
choose to shut them, or, what is almost equivalent,
to encumber them with such unjust relations as
would prevent their general use.
The principle thus enunciated by Secretary Cass
was sound then and it is sound now. The United
States has taken the position that no other government
is to build the canal. In 1889, when France
proposed to come to the aid of the French Panama
Company by guaranteeing their bonds, the Senate
of the United States in executive session, with only
some three votes dissenting, passed a resolution as
follows:
That the Government of the United States will
look with serious concern and disapproval upon any
connection of any European government with the
construction or control of any ship canal across the
Isthmus of Darien or across Central America, and
must regard any such connection or control as injurious
to the just rights and interests of the United
States and as a menace to their welfare.
Under the Hay-Pauncefote treaty it was explicitly
provided that the United States should control, police,
and protect the canal which was to be built,
keeping it open for the vessels of all nations on
equal terms. The United States thus assumed the
position of guarantor of the canal and of its peaceful
use by all the world. The guarantee included
as a matter of course the building of the canal.
The enterprise was recognized as responding to an
international need; and it would be the veriest travesty
on right and justice to treat the governments
in possession of the Isthmus as having the right,
in the language of Mr. Cass, “to close the gates of
intercourse on the great highways of the world, and
justify the act by the pretension that these avenues
of trade and travel belong to them and that they
choose to shut them.”
When this Government submitted to Colombia
the Hay-Herran treaty three things were, therefore,
already settled.
One was that the canal should be built. The
time for delay, the time for permitting the attempt
to be made by private enterprise, the time for permitting
any government of anti-social spirit and of
imperfect development to bar the work, was past.
The United States had assumed in connection with
the canal certain responsibilities not only to its own
people, but to the civilized world, which imperatively
demanded that there should no longer be delay in
beginning the work.
Second. While it was settled that the canal
should be built without unnecessary or improper
delay, it was no less clearly shown to be our purpose
to deal not merely in a spirit of justice but in
a spirit of generosity with the people through whose
land we might build it. The Hay-Herran treaty, if
it erred at all, erred in the direction of an overgenerosity
toward the Colombian Government. In
our anxiety to be fair we had gone to the very verge
in yielding to a weak nation’s demands what that
nation was helplessly unable to enforce from us
against our will. The only criticisms made upon
the Administration for the terms of the Hay-Herran
treaty were for having granted too much to Colombia,
not for failure to grant enough. Neither in
the Congress nor in the public press, at the time
that this treaty was formulated, was there complaint
that it did not in the fullest and amplest manner
guarantee to Colombia everything that she could
by any color of title demand.
Nor is the fact to be lost sight of that the rejected
treaty, while generously responding to the pecuniary
demands of Colombia, in other respects merely provided
for the construction of the canal in conformity
with the express requirements of the act of the Congress
of June 28, 1902. By that act, as heretofore
quoted, the President was authorized to acquire from
Colombia, for the purposes of the canal, “perpetual
control” of a certain strip of land; and it was expressly
required that the “control” thus to be obtained
should include “jurisdiction” to make police
and sanitary regulations and to establish such judicial
tribunals as might be agreed on for their enforcement.
These were conditions precedent prescribed
by the Congress; and for their fulfilment
suitable stipulations were embodied in the treaty.
It has been stated in public prints that Colombia
objected to these stipulations, on the ground that
they involved a relinquishment of her “sovereignty”;
but in the light of what has taken place, this
alleged objection must be considered as an afterthought.
In reality, the treaty, instead of requiring
a cession of Colombia’s sovereignty over the canal
strip, expressly acknowledged, confirmed, and preserved
her sovereignty over it. The treaty in this
respect simply proceeded on the lines on which all
the negotiations leading up to the present situation
have been conducted. In those negotiations the exercise
by the United States, subject to the paramount
rights of the local sovereign, of a substantial
control over the canal and the immediately adjacent
territory, has been treated as a fundamental part of
any arrangement that might be made. It has formed
an essential feature of all our plans, and its necessity
is fully recognized in the Hay-Pauncefote
treaty. The Congress, in providing that such control
should be secured, adopted no new principle,
but only incorporated in its legislation a condition
the importance and propriety of which were universally
recognized. During all the years of negotiation
and discussion that preceded the conclusion
of the Hay-Herran treaty, Colombia never intimated
that the requirement by the United States of
control over the canal strip would render unattainable
the construction of a canal by way of the Isthmus
of Panama; nor were we advised, during the
months when legislation of 1902 was pending before
the Congress, that the terms which it embodied
would render negotiations with Colombia
impracticable. It is plain that no nation could construct
and guarantee the neutrality of the canal with
a less degree of control than was stipulated for in
the Hay-Herran treaty. A refusal to grant such
degree of control was necessarily a refusal to make
any practicable treaty at all. Such refusal therefore
squarely raised the question whether Colombia
was entitled to bar the transit of the worlds traffic
across the Isthmus.
That the canal itself was eagerly demanded by
the people of the locality through which it was to
pass, and that the people of this locality no less
eagerly longed for its construction under American
control, are shown by the unanimity of action in the
new Panama Republic. Furthermore, Colombia,
after having rejected the treaty in spite of our protests
and warnings when it was in her power to
accept it, has since shown the utmost eagerness to
accept the same treaty if only the status quo could
be restored. One of the men standing highest in
the official circles of Colombia, on November 6, addressed
the American minister at Bogota, saying
that if the Government of the United States would
land troops to preserve Colombian sovereignty and
the transit, the Colombian Government would “declare
martial law; and, by virtue of vested constitutional
authority, when public order is disturbed,
[would] approve by decree the ratification of the
canal treaty as signed; or, if the Government of the
United States prefers, [would] call extra session of
the Congress—with new and friendly members—next
May to approve the treaty.” Having these
facts in view, there is no shadow of question that
the Government of the United States proposed a
treaty which was not merely just, but generous to
Colombia, which our people regarded as erring, if
at all, on the side of overgenerosity; which was
hailed with delight by the people of the immediate
locality through which the canal was to pass, who
were most concerned as to the new order of things,
and which the Colombian authorities now recognize
as being so good that they are willing to promise
its unconditional ratification if only we will desert
those who have shown themselves our friends and
restore to those who have shown themselves unfriendly
the power to undo what they did. I pass
by the question as to what assurance we have that
they would now keep their pledge and not again refuse
to ratify the treaty if they had the power; for,
of course, I will not for one moment discuss the
possibility of the United States committing an act
of such baseness as to abandon the new Republic
of Panama.
Third. Finally the Congress definitely settled
where the canal was to be built. It was provided
that a treaty should be made for building the canal
across the Isthmus of Panama; and if, after reasonable
time, it proved impossible to secure such treaty,
that then we should go to Nicaragua. The treaty
has been made; for it needs no argument to show
that the intent of the Congress was to ensure a
canal across Panama, and that whether the republic
granting the title was called New Granada,
Colombia, or Panama mattered not one whit. As
events turned out, the question of “reasonable time”
did not enter into the matter at all. Although, as
the months went by, it became increasingly improbable
that the Colombian Congress would ratify
the treaty or take steps which would be equivalent
thereto, yet all chance for such action on their part
did not vanish until the Congress closed at the end
of October; and within three days thereafter the
revolution in Panama had broken out. Panama
became an independent state, and the control of the
territory necessary for building the canal then became
obtainable. The condition under which alone
we could have gone to Nicaragua thereby became
impossible of fulfilment. If the pending treaty with
Panama should not be ratified by the Senate this
would not alter the fact that we could not go to
Nicaragua. The Congress has decided the route,
and there is no alternative under existing legislation.
When in August it began to appear probable
that the Colombian Legislature would not ratify
the treaty, it became incumbent upon me to consider
well what the situation was and to be ready
to advise the Congress as to what were the various
alternatives of action open to us. There were several
possibilities. One was that Colombia would
at the last moment see the unwisdom of her position.
That there might be nothing omitted, Secretary
Hay, through the minister at Bogota, repeatedly
warned Colombia that grave consequences
might follow from her rejection of the treaty. Although
it was a constantly diminishing chance, yet
the possibility of ratification did not wholly pass
away until the close of the session of the Colombian
Congress.
A second alternative was that by the close of the
session on the last day of October, without the ratification
of the treaty by Colombia and without any
steps taken by Panama, the American Congress on
assembling early in November would be confronted
with a situation in which there had been a failure
to come to terms as to building the canal along the
Panama route, and yet there had not been a lapse
of a reasonable time—using the word reasonable in
any proper sense—such as would justify the Administration
going to the Nicaragua route. This
situation seemed on the whole the most likely, and
as a matter of fact I had made the original draft
of my Message to the Congress with a view to its
existence.
It was the opinion of eminent international jurists
that in view of the fact that the great design of our
guarantee under the treaty of 1846 was to dedicate
the Isthmus to the purposes of interoceanic transit,
and above all to secure the construction of an interoceanic
canal, Colombia could not under existing
conditions refuse to enter into a proper arrangement
with the United States to that end, without
violating the spirit and substantially repudiating the
obligations of a treaty the full benefits of which
she had enjoyed for over fifty years. My intention
was to consult the Congress as to whether under
such circumstances it would not be proper to announce
that the canal was to be dug forthwith;
that we would give the terms that we had offered
and no others; and that if such terms were not
agreed to we would enter into an arrangement with
Panama direct, or take what other steps were needful
in order to begin the enterprise.
A third possibility was that the people of the
Isthmus, who had formerly constituted an independent
state, and who until recently were united to
Colombia only by a loose tie of federal relationship,
might take the protection of their own vital interests
into their own hands, reassert their former rights,
declare their independence upon just grounds, and
establish a government competent and willing to do
its share in this great work for civilization. This
third possibility is what actually occurred. Every
one knew that it was a possibility, but it was not
until toward the end of October that it appeared to
be an imminent probability. Although the Administration,
of course, had special means of knowledge,
no such means were necessary in order to appreciate
the possibility, and toward the end the likelihood,
of such a revolutionary outbreak and of its success.
It was a matter of common notoriety. Quotations
from the daily papers could be indefinitely multiplied
to show this state of affairs; a very few will
suffice. From Costa Rica on August 31 a special
was sent to the Washington “Post,” running as follows:
San Jose, Costa Rica,
August 31
Travelers from Panama report the Isthmus alive
with fires of a new revolution. It is inspired, it is
believed, by men who, in Panama and Colon, have
systematically engendered the pro-American feeling
to secure the building of the Isthmian Canal by the
United States.
The Indians have risen, and the late followers of
Gen. Benjamin Herrera are mustering in the mountain
villages, preparatory to joining in an organized
revolt, caused by the rejection of the canal treaty.
Hundreds of stacks of arms, confiscated by the
Colombian Government at the close of the late revolution,
have reappeared from some mysterious
source, and thousands of rifles that look suspiciously
like the Mausers the United States captured
in Cuba are issuing to the gathering forces from central
points of distribution. With the arms goes
ammunition, fresh from factories, showing the
movement is not spasmodic, but is carefully planned.
The government forces in Panama and Colon,
numbering less than 1,500 men, are reported to be
a little more than friendly to the revolutionary spirit.
They have been ill paid since the revolution closed,
and their only hope of prompt payment is another
war.
General Huertes, commander of the forces, who
is ostensibly loyal to the Bogota Government, is said
to be secretly friendly to the proposed revolution.
At least, all his personal friends are open in denunciation
of the Bogota Government and the failure of
the Colombian Congress to ratify the canal treaty.
The consensus of opinion gathered from late arrivals
from the Isthmus is that the revolution is coming,
and that it will succeed.
A special despatch to the Washington “Post,”
under date of New York, September 1, runs as
follows:
B. G. Duque, editor and proprietor of the “Panama
Star and Herald,” a resident of the Isthmus
during the past twenty-seven years, who arrived to-day
in New York, declared that if the canal treaty
fell through a revolution would be likely to follow.
“There is a very strong feeling in Panama,” said
Mr. Duque, “that Colombia, in negotiating the sale
of a canal concession in Panama, is looking for profits
that might just as well go to Panama herself.
“The Colombian Government, only the other day,
suppressed a newspaper that dared to speak of independence
for Panama. A while ago there was a
secret plan afoot to cut loose from Colombia and
seek the protection of the United States.”
In the New York “Herald” of September 10 the
following statement appeared:
Representatives of strong interests on the Isthmus
of Panama, who make their headquarters in this
city, are considering a plan of action to be undertaken
in co-operation with men of similar views in
Panama and Colon to bring about a revolution and
form an independent government in Panama opposed
to that in Bogota.
There is much indignation on the Isthmus on account
of the failure of the canal treaty, which is ascribed
to the authorities at Bogota. This opinion
is believed to be shared by a majority of the Isthmians
of all shades of political belief, and they think
it is to their best interest for a new republic to be
formed on the Isthmus, which may negotiate directly
with the United States a new treaty which
will permit the digging of the Panama Canal under
favorable conditions.
In the New York “Times,” under date of September
13, there appeared from Bogota the following
statement:
A proposal made by Señor Perez y Sotos to ask
the Executive to appoint an anti-secessionist governor
in Panama has been approved by the Senate.
Speakers in the Senate said that Señor Obaldía, who
was recently appointed Governor of Panama, and
who is favorable to a canal treaty, was a menace to
the national integrity. Senator Marroquín protested
against the action of the Senate.
President Marroquín succeeded later in calming
the Congressmen. It appears that he was able to
give them satisfactory reasons for Governor Obaldía’s
appointment. He appears to realize the imminent
peril of the Isthmus of Panama declaring its
independence.
Señor Deroux, representative for a Panama constituency,
recently delivered a sensational speech in
the House. Among other things he said:
“In Panama the bishops, governors, magistrates,
military chiefs, and their subordinates have been and
are foreign to the department. It seems that the
government, with surprising tenacity, wishes to exclude
the Isthmus from all participation in public
affairs. As regards international dangers in the
Isthmus, all I can say is that if these dangers exist
they are due to the conduct of the national government,
which is in the direction of reaction.
“If the Colombian Government will not take action
with a view to preventing disaster, the responsibility
will rest with it alone.”
In the New York “Herald” of October 26 it was
reported that a revolutionary expedition of about
70 men had actually landed on the Isthmus. In the
Washington “Post” of October 29 it was reported
from Panama that in view of the impending trouble
on the Isthmus the Bogota Government had gathered
troops in sufficient numbers to at once put
down an attempt at secession. In the New York
“Herald” of October 30 it was announced from
Panama that Bogota was hurrying troops to the
Isthmus to put down the projected revolt. In the
New York “Herald” of November 2 it was announced
that in Bogota the Congress had indorsed
the energetic measures taken to meet the situation
on the Isthmus and that 6,000 men were about to
be sent thither.
Quotations like the above could be multiplied
indefinitely. Suffice it to say that it was notorious
that revolutionary trouble of a serious nature was
impending upon the Isthmus. But it was not necessary
to rely exclusively upon such general means
of information. On October 15 Commander Hubbard,
of the navy, notified the Navy Department
that, though things were quiet on the Isthmus, a
revolution had broken out in the State of Cauca.
On October 16, at the request of Lieutenant-General
Young, I saw Capt. C. B. Humphrey and Lieut.
Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy, who had just returned
from a four months’ tour through the northern
portions of Venezuela and Colombia. They
stopped in Panama on their return in the latter part
of September. At the time they were sent down
there had been no thought of their going to Panama,
and their visit to the Isthmus was but an
unpremeditated incident of their return journey; nor
had they been spoken to by any one at Washington
regarding the possibility of a revolt. Until they
landed at Colon they had no knowledge that a revolution
was impending, save what they had gained
from the newspapers. What they saw in Panama
so impressed them that they reported thereon to
Lieutenant-General Young, according to his memorandum—
that while on the Isthmus they became satisfied beyond
question that, owing largely to the dissatisfaction
because of the failure of Colombia to ratify the
Hay-Herran treaty, a revolutionary party was in
course of organization having for its object the
separation of the State of Panama from Colombia,
the leader being Dr. Richard Arango, a former governor
of Panama; that when they were on the Isthmus
arms and ammunition were being smuggled
into the city of Colon in piano boxes, merchandise
crates, etc., the small arms received being principally
the Gras French rifle, the Remington, and the Mauser;
that nearly every citizen in Panama had some
sort of rifle or gun in his possession, with ammunition
therefor; that in the city of Panama there had
been organized a fire brigade which was really intended
for a revolutionary military organization;
that there were representatives of the revolutionary
organization at all-important points on the Isthmus;
that in Panama, Colon, and the other principal places
of the Isthmus police forces had been organized
which were in reality revolutionary forces; that the
people on the Isthmus seemed to be unanimous in
their sentiment against the Bogota Government, and
their disgust over the failure of that government to
ratify the treaty providing for the construction of
the canal, and that a revolution might be expected
immediately upon the adjournment of the Colombian
Congress without ratification of the treaty.
Lieutenant-General Young regarded their report
as of such importance as to make it advisable that
I should personally see these officers. They told me
what they had already reported to the Lieutenant-General,
adding that on the Isthmus the excitement
was seething, and that the Colombian troops were
reported to be disaffected. In response to a question
of mine they informed me that it was the general
belief that the revolution might break out at
any moment, and if it did not happen before, would
doubtless take place immediately after the closing
of the Colombian Congress (at the end of October)
if the canal treaty were not ratified. They were
certain that the revolution would occur, and before
leaving the Isthmus had made their own reckoning
as to the time, which they had set down as being
probably from three to four weeks after their leaving.
The reason they set this as the probable inside
limit of time was that they reckoned that it would
be at least three or four weeks—say not until October
20—before a sufficient quantity of arms and
munitions would have been landed.
In view of all these facts I directed the Navy
Department to issue instructions such as would ensure
our having ships within easy reach of the
Isthmus in the event of need arising. Orders were
given on October 19 to the Boston to proceed to
San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua; to the Dixie to prepare
to sail from League Island; and to the Atlanta
to proceed to Guantanamo. On October 30 the
Nashville was ordered to proceed to Colon. On
November 2, when, the Colombian Congress having
adjourned, it was evident that the outbreak was
imminent, and when it was announced that both
sides were making ready forces whose meeting
would mean bloodshed and disorder, the Colombian
troops having been embarked on vessels, the following
instructions were sent to the commanders of
the Boston, Nashville, and Dixie:
Maintain free and uninterrupted transit. If interruption
is threatened by armed force, occupy the
line of railroad. Prevent landing of any armed
force with hostile intent, either government or insurgent,
at any point within 50 miles of Panama.
Government force reported approaching the Isthmus
in vessels. Prevent their landing if, in your judgment,
the landing would precipitate a conflict.
These orders were delivered in pursuance of the
policy on which our Government had repeatedly
acted. This policy was exhibited in the following
orders, given under somewhat similar circumstances
last year, and the year before, and the year before
that. The first two telegrams are from the Department
of State to the consul at Panama:
July 25, 1900
You are directed to protest against any act of
hostility which may involve or imperil the safe and
peaceful transit of persons or property across the
Isthmus of Panama. The bombardment of Panama
would have this effect, and the United States must
insist upon the neutrality of the Isthmus as guaranteed
by the treaty.
November 20, 1901
Notify all parties molesting or interfering with
free transit across the Isthmus that such interference
must cease and that the United States will prevent
the interruption of traffic upon the railroad.
Consult with captain of the Iowa, who will be instructed
to land marines, if necessary, for the protection
of the railroad, in accordance with the treaty
rights and obligations of the United States. Desirable
to avoid bloodshed, if possible.
The next three telegrams are from and to the
Secretary of the Navy:
September 12, 1902
Ranger, Panama:
United States guarantees perfect neutrality of
Isthmus and that a free transit from sea to sea be
not interrupted or embarrassed.... Any transportation
of troops which might contravene these
provisions of treaty should not be sanctioned by you
nor should use of road be permitted which might
convert the line of transit into theatre of hostility.
Moody.
Colon,
September 20, 1902
Secretary Navy, Washington:
Everything is conceded. The United States
guards and guarantees traffic and the line of transit.
To-day I permitted the exchange of Colombian
troops from Panama to Colon, about 1,000 men
each way, the troops without arms in train guarded
by American naval force in the same manner as
other passengers; arms and ammunition in separate
train, guarded also by naval force in the same manner
as other freight.
McLean.
Panama,
October 3, 1902
Secretary Navy, Washington, D. C.:
Have sent this communication to the American
consul at Panama:
“Inform Governor while trains running under
United States protection I must decline transportation
any combatants, ammunition, arms, which
might cause interruption traffic or convert line of
transit into theatre hostilities.”
Casey.
On November 3 Commander Hubbard responded
to the above-quoted telegram of November 2, 1903,
saying that before the telegram had been received
400 Colombian troops from Cartagena had landed
at Colon; that there had been no revolution on the
Isthmus, but that the situation was most critical if
the revolutionary leaders should act. On this same
date the Associated Press in Washington received
a bulletin stating that a revolutionary outbreak had
occurred. When this was brought to the attention
of the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Loomis,
he prepared the following cablegram to the consul-general
at Panama and the consul at Colon:
Uprising on Isthmus reported. Keep Department
promptly and fully informed.
Before this telegram was sent, however, one was
received from Consul Malmros at Colon, running
as follows:
Revolution imminent. Government force on the
Isthmus about 500 men. Their official promised
support revolution. Fire department, Panama, 441,
are well organized and favor revolution. Government
vessel, Cartagena, with about 400 men, arrived
early to-day with new commander-in-chief, Tobar.
Was not expected until November 10. Tobar’s arrival
is not probable to stop revolution.
This cablegram was received at 2.35 P.M., and
at 3.40 P.M. Mr. Loomis sent the telegram which he
had already prepared to both Panama and Colon.
Apparently, however, the consul-general at Panama
had not received the information embodied in the
Associated Press bulletin, upon which the Assistant
Secretary of State based his dispatch; for his answer
was that there was no uprising, although the situation
was critical, this answer being received at
8.15 P.M. Immediately afterward he sent another
dispatch, which was received at 9.50 P.M., saying
that the uprising had occurred, and had been successful,
with no bloodshed. The Colombian gunboat
Bogota next day began to shell the city of
Panama, with the result of killing one Chinaman.
The consul-general was directed to notify her to
stop firing. Meanwhile, on November 4, Commander
Hubbard notified the Department that he had
landed a force to protect the lives and property of
American citizens against the threats of the Colombian
soldiery.
Before any step whatever had been taken by the
United States troops to restore order, the commander
of the newly landed Colombian troops had
indulged in wanton and violent threats against
American citizens, which created serious apprehension.
As Commander Hubbard reported in his letter
of November 5, this officer and his troops practically
began war against the United States, and
only the forbearance and coolness of our officers
and men prevented bloodshed. The letter of Commander
Hubbard is of such interest that it deserves
quotation in full, and runs as follows:
U. S. S. Nashville, Third Rate,
Colon, U. S. Colombia, November 5, 1903
Sir: Pending a complete report of the occurrences
of the last three days in Colon, Colombia, I most
respectfully invite the Department’s attention to
those of the date of Wednesday, November 4, which
amounted to practically the making of war against
the United States by the officer in command of the
Colombian troops in Colon. At 1 o’clock P.M. on
that date I was summoned on shore by a preconcerted
signal, and on landing met the United States
consul, vice-consul, and Colonel Shaler, the general
superintendent of the Panama Railroad. The consul
informed me that he had received notice from
the officer commanding the Colombian troops, Colonel
Torres, through the prefect of Colon, to the effect
that if the Colombian officers, Generals Tobal
and Amaya, who had been seized in Panama on the
evening of the 3d of November by the Independents
and held as prisoners, were not released by 2 o’clock
P.M., he, Torres, would open fire on the town of
Colon and kill every United States citizen in the
place, and my advice and action were requested. I
advised that all the United States citizens should
take refuge in the shed of the Panama Railroad
Company, a stone building susceptible of being put
into good state for defence, and that I would immediately
land such body of men with extra arms for
arming the citizens, as the complement of the ship
would permit. This was agreed to, and I immediately
returned on board, arriving at 1.15 P.M.
The order for landing was immediately given, and
at 1.30 P.M. the boats left the ship with a party of
42 men under the command of Lieut.-Commander
H. M. Witzel, with Midshipman J. P. Jackson as
second in command. Time being pressing I gave
verbal orders to Mr. Witzel to take the building
above referred to, to put it into the best state of defence
possible, and protect the lives of the citizens
assembled there—not firing unless fired upon. The
women and children took refuge on the German
steamer Marcomania and Panama Railroad steamer
City of Washington, both ready to haul out from
dock if necessary. The Nashville I got under way
and patrolled with her along the water front close
in and ready to use either small-arm or shrapnel
fire. The Colombians surrounded the building of
the railroad company almost immediately after we
had taken possession, and for about one and a half
hours their attitude was most threatening, it being
seemingly their purpose to provoke an attack. Happily
our men were cool and steady, and, while the
tension was very great, no shot was fired. At about
3.15 P.M. Colonel Torres came into the building for
an interview and expressed himself as most friendly
to Americans, claiming that the whole affair was a
misapprehension and that he would like to send the
alcalde of Colon to Panama to see General Tobal
and have him direct the discontinuance of the show
of force. A special train was furnished and safe
conduct guaranteed. At about 5.30 P.M. Colonel
Torres made the proposition of withdrawing his
troops to Monkey Hill, if I would withdraw the
Nashville’s force and leave the town in possession
of the police until the return of the alcalde on the
morning of the 5th. After an interview with the
United States consul and Colonel Shaler as to the
probability of good faith in the matter, I decided to
accept the proposition and brought my men on
board, the disparity in numbers between my force
and that of the Colombians, nearly ten to one, making
me desirous of avoiding a conflict so long as the
object in view, the protection of American citizens,
was not imperiled.
I am positive that the determined attitude of our
men, their coolness and evident intention of standing
their ground, had a most salutary and decisive
effect on the immediate situation, and was the initial
step in the ultimate abandoning of Colon by these
troops and their return to Cartagena the following
day. Lieutenant-Commander Witzel is entitled to
much praise for his admirable work in command on
the spot.
I feel that I can not sufficiently strongly represent
to the Department the grossness of this outrage and
the insult to our dignity, even apart from the savagery
of the threat.
Very respectfully,
John Hubbard,
Commander, U. S. Navy,
Commanding.
The Secretary of the Navy,
Navy Department, Washington, D. C.
In his letter of November 8 Commander Hubbard
sets forth the facts more in detail:
U. S. S. Nashville, Third Rate,
Porto Bello, U. S. Colombia, November 8, 1903
Sir: 1. I have the honor to make the following
report of the occurrences which took place at Colon
and Panama in the interval between the arrival of
the Nashville at Colon on the evening of November
2, 1903, and the evening of November 5, 1903,
when by the arrival of the U. S. S. Dixie at Colon
I was relieved as senior officer by Commander F. H.
Delano, U. S. Navy.
2. At the time of the arrival of the Nashville at
Colon at 5.30 P.M. on November 2 everything on
the Isthmus was quiet. There was talk of proclaiming
the independence of Panama, but no definite action
had been taken and there had been no disturbance
of peace and order. At daylight on the morning
of November 3 it was found that a vessel which
had come in during the night was the Colombian
gunboat Cartagena carrying between 400 and 500
troops. I had her boarded and learned that these
troops were for the garrison at Panama. Inasmuch
as the Independent party had not acted and the Government
of Colombia was at the time in undisputed
control of the Province of Panama, I did not feel,
in the absence of any instructions, that I was justified
in preventing the landing of these troops, and
at 8.30 o’clock they were disembarked. The commanding
officers, Generals Amaya and Tobal, with
four others, immediately went over to Panama to
make arrangements for receiving and quartering
their troops, leaving the command in charge of an
officer whom I later learned to be Colonel Torres.
The Department’s message addressed to the care of
the United States consul I received at 10.30 A.M.;
it was delivered to one of the ship’s boats while I
was at the consul’s and not to the consul as addressed.
The message was said to have been received
at the cable office at 9.30 A.M. Immediately
on deciphering the message I went on shore to see
what arrangements the railroad company had made
for the transportation of these troops to Panama,
and learned that the company would not transport
them except on request of the Governor of Panama,
and that the prefect at Colon and the officer left in
command of the troops had been so notified by the
general superintendent of the Panama Railroad
Company. I remained at the company’s office until
it was sure that no action on my part would be
needed to prevent the transportation of the troops
that afternoon, when I returned on board and cabled
the Department the situation of affairs. At about
5.30 P.M. I again went on shore, and received notice
from the general superintendent of the railroad that
he had received the request for the transportation of
the troops and that they would leave on the 8 A.M.
train on the following day. I immediately went to
see the general superintendent, and learned that it
had just been announced that a provisional government
had been established at Panama—that Generals
Amaya and Tobal, the Governor of Panama,
and four officers, who had gone to Panama in the
morning, had been seized and were held as prisoners;
that they had an organized force of 1,500
troops and wished the government troops in Colon
to be sent over. This I declined to permit, and
verbally prohibited the general superintendent
from giving transportation to the troops of either
party.
It being then late in the evening, I sent early in
the morning of November 4 written notification to
the general superintendent of the Panama Railroad,
to the prefect of Colon, and to the officer left in
command of the Colombian troops, later ascertained
to be Colonel Torres, that I had prohibited the transportation
of troops in either direction, in order to
preserve the free and uninterrupted transit of the
Isthmus. Copies of these letters are hereto appended;
also copy of my notification to the consul.
Except to a few people, nothing was known in Colon
of the proceedings in Panama until the arrival of
the train at 10.45 on the morning of the 4th. Some
propositions were, I was later told, made to Colonel
Torres by the representatives of the new Government
at Colon, with a view to inducing him to re-embark
in the Cartagena and return to the port of
Cartagena, and it was in answer to this proposition
that Colonel Torres made the threat and took the
action reported in my letter No. 96, of November
5, 1903. The Cartagena left the port just after the
threat was made, and I did not deem it expedient
to attempt to detain her, as such action would certainly,
in the then state of affairs, have precipitated
a conflict on shore which I was not prepared to meet.
It is my understanding that she returned to Cartagena.
After the withdrawal of the Colombian
troops on the evening of November 4, and the return
of the Nashville’s force on board, as reported
in my letter No. 96, there was no disturbance on
shore, and the night passed quietly. On the morning
of the 5th I discovered that the commander of
the Colombian troops had not withdrawn so far
from the town as he had agreed, but was occupying
buildings near the outskirts of the town. I immediately
inquired into the matter and learned that he
had some trivial excuse for not carrying out his
agreement, and also that it was his intention to occupy
Colon again on the arrival of the alcalde due
at 10.45 A.M., unless General Tobal sent word by
the alcalde that he, Colonel Torres, should withdraw.
That General Tobal had declined to give
any instructions I was cognizant of, and the situation at
once became quite as serious as on the day
previous. I immediately landed an armed force,
reoccupied the same building; also landed two 1-pounders
and mounted them on platform cars behind
protection of cotton bales, and then in company
with the United States consul had an interview with
Colonel Torres, in the course of which I informed
him that I had relanded my men because he had not
kept his agreement; that I had no interest in the affairs
of either party; that my attitude was strictly
neutral; that the troops of neither side should be
transported; that my sole purpose in landing was
to protect the lives and property of American citizens
if threatened, as they had been threatened, and
to maintain the free and uninterrupted transit of the
Isthmus, and that purpose I should maintain by
force if necessary. I also strongly advised that in
the interests of peace, and to prevent the possibility
of a conflict that could not but be regrettable, he
should carry out his agreement of the previous evening
and withdraw to Monkey Hill.
Colonel Torres’s only reply was that it was unhealthy
at Monkey Hill, a reiteration of his love of
Americans, and persistence in his intention to occupy
Colon, should General Tobal not give him directions
to the contrary.
On the return of the alcalde at about 11 A.M. the
Colombian troops marched into Colon, but did not
assume the threatening demeanor of the previous
day. The American women and children again went
on board the Marcomania and City of Washington,
and through the British vice-consul I offered protection
to British subjects as directed in the Department’s
cablegram. A copy of the British vice-consul’s
acknowledgment is hereto appended. The
Nashville I got under way as on the previous day
and moved close in to protect the water front. During
the afternoon several propositions were made to
Colonel Torres by the representatives of the new
government, and he was finally persuaded by them
to embark on the Royal Mail steamer Orinoco with
all his troops and return to Cartagena. The Orinoco
left her dock with the troops—474 all told—at
7.35 P.M. The Dixie arrived and anchored at 7.05
P.M., when I went on board and acquainted the commanding
officer with the situation. A portion of
the marine battalion was landed and the Nashville’s
force withdrawn.
3. On the evening of November 4 Major William
M. Black and Lieut. Mark Brooke, Corps of Engineers,
U. S. Army, came to Colon from Culebra and
volunteered their services, which were accepted, and
they rendered very efficient help on the following
day.
4. I beg to assure the Department that I had no
part whatever in the negotiations that were carried
on between Colonel Torres and the representatives
of the provisional government; that I landed an
armed force only when the lives of American citizens
were threatened, and withdrew this force as
soon as there seemed to be no grounds for further
apprehension of injury to American lives or property;
that I relanded an armed force because of the
failure of Colonel Torres to carry out his agreement
to withdraw and announced intention of returning,
and that my attitude throughout was strictly neutral
as between the two parties, my only purpose being
to protect the lives and property of American citizens
and to preserve the free and uninterrupted transit of
the Isthmus.
Very respectfully,
(Signed) John Hubbard,
Commander, U. S. Navy, Commanding.
The Secretary of the Navy,
Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department,
Washington, D. C.
This plain official account of the occurrences of
November 4 shows that, instead of there having
been too much prevision by the American Government
for the maintenance of order and the protection
of life and property on the Isthmus, the orders
for the movement of the American warships had
been too long delayed; so long, in fact, that there
were but forty-two marines and sailors available to
land and protect the lives of American men and
women. It was only the coolness and gallantry with
which this little band of men wearing the American
uniform faced ten times their number of armed foes,
bent on carrying out the atrocious threat of the Colombian
commander, that prevented a murderous
catastrophe. At Panama, when the revolution broke
out, there was no American man-of-war and no
American troops or sailors. At Colon, Commander
Hubbard acted with entire impartiality toward both
sides, preventing any movement, whether by the
Colombians or the Panamans, which would tend to
produce bloodshed. On November 9 he prevented
a body of the revolutionists from landing at Colon.
Throughout he behaved in the most creditable manner.
In the New York “Evening Post,” under date
of Panama, December 8, there is an article from a
special correspondent, which sets forth in detail the
unbearable oppression of the Colombian Government
in Panama. In this article is an interesting interview
with a native Panaman, which runs in part as
follows:
... We looked upon the building of the canal
as a matter of life or death to us. We wanted that
because it meant, with the United States in control
of it, peace and prosperity for us. President Marroquin
appointed an Isthmian to be governor of Panama;
and we looked upon that as of happy augury.
Soon we heard that the canal treaty was not likely
to be approved at Bogota; next we heard that our
Isthmian Governor, Obaldía, who had scarcely assumed
power, was to be superseded by a soldier
from Bogota....
Notwithstanding all that Colombia has drained
us of in the way of revenues, she did not bridge for
us a single river, nor make a single roadway, nor
erect a single college where our children could be
educated, nor do anything at all to advance our industries....
Well, when the new generals came
we seized them, arrested them, and the town of
Panama was in joy. Not a protest was made, except
the shots fired from the Colombian gunboat
Bogota, which killed one Chinese lying in his bed.
We were willing to encounter the Colombian troops
at Colon and fight it out; but the commander of the
United States cruiser Nashville forbade Superintendent
Shaler to allow the railroad to transport
troops for either party. That is our story.
I call especial attention to the concluding portion
of this interview, which states the willingness of
the Panama people to fight the Colombian troops and
the refusal of Commander Hubbard to permit them
to use the railroad and therefore to get into a position
where the fight could take place. It thus clearly
appears that the fact that there was no bloodshed
on the Isthmus was directly due—and only due—to
the prompt and firm enforcement by the United
States of its traditional policy. During the past
forty years revolutions and attempts at revolution
have succeeded one another with monotonous regularity
on the Isthmus, and again and again United
States sailors and marines have been landed as they
were landed in this instance and under similar instructions
to protect the transit. One of these revolutions
resulted in three years of warfare; and the
aggregate of bloodshed and misery caused by them
has been incalculable. The fact that in this last revolution
not a life was lost, save that of the man killed
by the shells of the Colombian gunboat, and no property
destroyed, was due to the action which I have
described. We, in effect, policed the Isthmus in the
interest of its inhabitants and of our own national
needs, and for the good of the entire civilized world.
Failure to act as the Administration acted would
have meant great waste of life, great suffering, great
destruction of property; all of which was avoided by
the firmness and prudence with which Commander
Hubbard carried out his orders and prevented either
party from attacking the other. Our action was for
the peace both of Colombia and of Panama. It is
earnestly to be hoped that there will be no unwise
conduct on our part which may encourage Colombia
to embark on a war which can not result in her regaining
control of the Isthmus, but which may cause
much bloodshed and suffering.
I hesitate to refer to the injurious insinuations
which have been made of complicity by this government
in the revolutionary movement in Panama.
They are as destitute of foundation as of propriety.
The only excuse for my mentioning them is the fear
lest unthinking persons might mistake for acquiescence
the silence of mere self-respect. I think proper
to say, therefore, that no one connected with this
Government had any part in preparing, inciting, or
encouraging the late revolution on the Isthmus of
Panama, and that save from the reports of our military
and naval officers, given above, no one connected
with this Government had any previous
knowledge of the revolution except such as was accessible
to any person of ordinary intelligence who
read the newspapers and kept up a current acquaintance
with public affairs.
By the unanimous action of its people, without the
firing of a shot—with a unanimity hardly before recorded
in any similar case—the people of Panama
declared themselves an independent republic. Their
recognition by this Government was based upon a
state of facts in no way dependent for its justification
upon our action in ordinary cases. I have not denied,
nor do I wish to deny, either the validity or
the propriety of the general rule that a new state
should not be recognized as independent till it has
shown its ability to maintain its independence. This
rule is derived from the principle of non-intervention,
and as a corollary of that principle has generally
been observed by the United States. But, like the
principle from which it is deduced, the rule is subject
to exceptions; and there are in my opinion clear
and imperative reasons why a departure from it was
justified and even required in the present instance.
These reasons embrace, first, our treaty rights; second,
our national interests and safety; and, third, the
interests of collective civilization.
I have already adverted to the treaty of 1846, by
the thirty-fifth article of which the United States secured
the right to a free and open transit across the
Isthmus of Panama, and to that end agreed to guarantee
to New Granada her rights of sovereignty and
property over that territory. This article is sometimes
discussed as if the latter guarantee constituted
its sole object and bound the United States to protect
the sovereignty of New Granada against domestic
revolution. Nothing, however, could be more erroneous
than this supposition. That our wise and
patriotic ancestors, with all their dread of entangling
alliances, would have entered into a treaty with New
Granada solely or even primarily for the purpose of
enabling that remnant of the original Republic of
Colombia, then resolved into the States of New
Granada, Venezuela, and Ecuador, to continue from
Bogota to rule over the Isthmus of Panama, is a
conception that would in itself be incredible, even if
the contrary did not clearly appear. It is true that
since the treaty was made the United States has
again and again been obliged forcibly to intervene
for the preservation of order and the maintenance of
an open transit, and that this intervention has usually
operated to the advantage of the titular Government
of Colombia, but it is equally true that the
United States in intervening with or without Colombia’s
consent, for the protection of the transit, has
disclaimed any duty to defend the Colombian Government
against domestic insurrection or against
the erection of an independent government on the
Isthmus of Panama. The attacks against which the
United States engaged to protect New Granadian
sovereignty were those of foreign powers; but this
engagement was only a means to the accomplishment
of a yet more important end. The great design
of the article was to assure the dedication of the
Isthmus to the purposes of free and unobstructed
interoceanic transit, the consummation of which
would be found in an interoceanic canal. To the
accomplishment of this object the Government of
the United States had for years directed its diplomacy.
It occupied a place in the instructions to our
delegates to the Panama Congress during the Administration
of John Quincy Adams. It formed the
subject of a resolution of the Senate in 1835, and
of the House of Representatives in 1839. In 1846
its importance had become still more apparent by
reason of the Mexican war. If the treaty of 1846
did not in terms bind New Granada to grant reasonable
concessions for the construction of means of interoceanic
communication, it was only because it was
not imagined that such concessions would ever be
withheld. As it was expressly agreed that the United
States, in consideration of its onerous guarantee of
New Granadian sovereignty, should possess the right
of free and open transit on any modes of communication
that might be constructed, the obvious intent
of the treaty rendered it unnecessary, if not superfluous,
in terms to stipulate that permission for the
construction of such modes of communication should
not be denied.
Long before the conclusion of the Hay-Herran
treaty the course of events had shown that a canal to
connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans must be
built by the United States or not at all. Experience
had demonstrated that private enterprise was utterly
inadequate for the purpose; and a fixed policy, declared
by the United States on many memorable occasions,
and supported by the practically unanimous
voice of American opinion, had rendered it morally
impossible that the work should be undertaken by
European powers, either singly or in combination.
Such were the universally recognized conditions on
which the legislation of the Congress was based, and
on which the late negotiations with Colombia were
begun and concluded. Nevertheless, when the well-considered
agreement was rejected by Colombia and
the revolution on the Isthmus ensued, one of Colombia’s
first acts was to invoke the intervention of the
United States; nor does her invitation appear to have
been confined to this Government alone. By a telegram
from Mr. Beaupré, our minister at Bogota,
of the 7th of November last, we were informed that
General Reyes would soon leave Panama invested
with full powers; that he had telegraphed the President
of Mexico to ask the Government of the United
States and all countries represented at the Pan-American
Conference “to aid Colombia to preserve
her integrity”; and that he had requested that the
Government of the United States should meanwhile
“preserve the neutrality and transit of the Isthmus”
and should “not recognize the new government.” In
another telegram from Mr. Beaupré, which was sent
later in the day, this Government was asked whether
it would take action “to maintain Colombian right
and sovereignty on the Isthmus in accordance with
article 35 [of] the treaty of 1846” in case the Colombian
Government should be “entirely unable to
suppress the secession movement there.” Here was
a direct solicitation to the United States to intervene
for the purpose of suppressing, contrary to the treaty
of 1846 as this Government has uniformly construed
it, a new revolt against Colombia’s authority brought
about by her own refusal to permit the fulfilment of
the great design for which that treaty was made. It
was under these circumstances that the United
States, instead of using its forces to destroy those
who sought to make the engagements of the treaty
a reality, recognized them as the proper custodians
of the sovereignty of the Isthmus.
This recognition was, in the second place, further
justified by the highest considerations of our national
interests and safety. In all the range of our international
relations I do not hesitate to affirm that
there is nothing of greater or more pressing importance
than the construction of an interoceanic canal.
Long acknowledged to be essential to our commercial
development, it has become, as the result of the
recent extension of our territorial dominion, more
than ever essential to our national self-defence. In
transmitting to the Senate the treaty of 1846, President
Polk pointed out as the principal reason for its
ratification that the passage of the Isthmus, which it
was designed to secure, “would relieve us from a
long and dangerous navigation of more than 9,000
miles around Cape Horn, and render our communication
with our own possessions on the northwest
coast of America comparatively easy and speedy.”
The events of the past five years have given to this
consideration an importance immeasurably greater
than it possessed in 1846. In the light of our present
situation, the establishment of easy and speedy communication
by sea between the Atlantic and the Pacific
presents itself not simply as something to be
desired, but as an object to be positively and promptly
attained. Reasons of convenience have been superseded
by reasons of vital necessity, which do not
admit of indefinite delays.
To such delays the rejection by Colombia of the
Hay-Herran treaty directly exposed us. As proof
of this fact I need only refer to the programme outlined
in the report of the majority of the Panama
Canal Committee, read in the Colombian Senate on
the 14th of October last. In this report, which recommended
that the discussion of a law to authorize the
government to enter upon new negotiations should
be indefinitely postponed, it is proposed that the consideration
of the subject should be deferred till October
31, 1904, when the next Colombian Congress
should have met in ordinary session. By that time,
as the report goes on to say, the extension of time
granted to the New Panama Canal Company by
treaty in 1893 would have expired, and the new
Congress would be in a position to take up the question
whether the company had not, in spite of further
extensions that had been granted by legislative acts,
forfeited all its property and rights. “When that
time arrives,” the report significantly declares, “the
Republic, without any impediment, will be able to
contract, and will be in more clear, more definite,
and more advantageous possession, both legally and
materially.” The naked meaning of this report is
that Colombia proposed to wait until, by the enforcement
of a forfeiture repugnant to the ideas of justice
which obtain in every civilized nation, the property
and rights of the New Panama Canal Company
could be confiscated.
Such is the scheme to which it was proposed that
the United States should be invited to become a
party. The construction of the canal was to be
relegated to the indefinite future, while Colombia
was, by reason of her own delay, to be placed in
the “more advantageous” position of claiming not
merely the compensation to be paid by the United
States for the privilege of completing the canal, but
also the forty millions authorized by the act of 1902
to be paid for the property of the New Panama
Canal Company. That the attempt to carry out
this scheme would have brought Colombia into conflict
with the Government of France can not be
doubted; nor could the United States have counted
upon immunity from the consequences of the attempt,
even apart from the indefinite delays to which
the construction of the canal was to be subjected.
On the first appearance of danger to Colombia, this
Government would have been summoned to interpose,
in order to give effect to the guarantees of the
treaty of 1846; and all this in support of a plan
which, while characterized in its first stage by the
wanton disregard of our own highest interests, was
fitly to end in further injury to the citizens of a
friendly nation, whose enormous losses in their generous
efforts to pierce the Isthmus have become a
matter of history.
In the third place, I confidently maintain that the
recognition of the Republic of Panama was an act
justified by the interests of collective civilization.
If ever a government could be said to have received
a mandate from civilization to effect an object the
accomplishment of which was demanded in the interest
of mankind, the United States holds that
position with regard to the interoceanic canal.
Since our purpose to build the canal was definitely
announced, there have come from all quarters assurances
of approval and encouragement, in which
even Colombia herself at one time participated; and
to general assurances were added specific acts and
declarations. In order that no obstacle might stand
in our way, Great Britain renounced important
rights under the Clayton-Bulwer treaty and agreed
to its abrogation, receiving in return nothing but
our honorable pledge to build the canal and protect
it as an open highway. It was in view of this
pledge, and of the proposed enactment by the Congress
of the United States of legislation to give
it immediate effect, that the second Pan-American
Conference, at the City of Mexico, on January 22,
1902, adopted the following resolution:
The Republics assembled at the International
Conference of Mexico applaud the purpose of the
United States Government to construct an interoceanic
canal, and acknowledge that this work will
not only be worthy of the greatness of the American
people, but also in the highest sense a work of civilization,
and to the greatest degree beneficial to the
development of commerce between the American
States and the other countries of the world.
Among those who signed this resolution on behalf
of their respective governments was General Reyes,
the delegate of Colombia. Little could it have been
foreseen that two years later the Colombian Government,
led astray by false allurements of selfish advantage,
and forgetful alike of its international
obligations and of the duties and responsibilities
of sovereignty, would thwart the efforts of the
United States to enter upon and complete a work
which the nations of America, re-echoing the sentiment
of the nations of Europe, had pronounced to
be not only “worthy of the greatness of the American
people,” but also “in the highest sense a work
of civilization.”
That our position as the mandatary of civilization
has been by no means misconceived is shown
by the promptitude with which the powers have,
one after another, followed our lead in recognizing
Panama as an independent State. Our action in
recognizing the new republic has been followed by
like recognition on the part of France, Germany,
Denmark, Russia, Sweden, and Norway, Nicaragua,
Peru, China, Cuba, Great Britain, Italy, Costa Rica,
Japan, and Austria-Hungary.
In view of the manifold considerations of treaty
right and obligation, of national interest and safety,
and of collective civilization, by which our Government
was constrained to act, I am at a loss to comprehend
the attitude of those who can discern in
the recognition of the Republic of Panama only a
general approval of the principle of “revolution”
by which a given government is overturned or one
portion of a country separated from another. Only
the amplest justification can warrant a revolutionary
movement of either kind. But there is no fixed rule
which can be applied to all such movements. Each
case must be judged on its own merits. There have
been many revolutionary movements, many movements
for the dismemberment of countries, which
were evil, tried by any standard. But in my opinion
no disinterested and fair-minded observer acquainted
with the circumstances can fail to feel that Panama
had the amplest justification for separation from
Colombia under the conditions existing, and, moreover,
that its action was in the highest degree beneficial
to the interests of the entire civilized world
by securing the immediate opportunity for the
building of the interoceanic canal. It would be
well for those who are pessimistic as to our action
in peacefully recognizing the Republic of Panama,
while we lawfully protected the transit from invasion
and disturbance, to recall what has been done
in Cuba, where we intervened even by force on general
grounds of national interest and duty. When
we interfered it was freely prophesied that we intended
to keep Cuba and administer it for our own
interests. The result has demonstrated in singularly
conclusive fashion the falsity of these prophecies.
Cuba is now an independent republic. We governed
it in its own interests for a few years, till it was able
to stand alone, and then started it upon its career of
self-government and independence, granting it all
necessary aid. We have received from Cuba a grant
of two naval stations, so situated that they in no
possible way menace the liberty of the island, and
yet serve as important defences for the Cuban people,
as well as for our own people, against possible
foreign attack. The people of Cuba have been immeasurably
benefited by our interference in their
behalf, and our own gain has been great. So will
it be with Panama. The people of the Isthmus,
and as I firmly believe of the adjacent parts of Central
and South America, will be greatly benefited
by the building of the canal and the guarantee of
peace and order along its line; and hand in hand
with the benefit to them will go the benefit to us and
to mankind. By our prompt and decisive action,
not only have our interests and those of the world
at large been conserved, but we have forestalled
complications which were likely to be fruitful in
loss to ourselves, and in bloodshed and suffering to
the people of the Isthmus.
Instead of using our forces, as we were invited
by Colombia to do, for the twofold purpose of defeating
our own rights and interests and the interests
of the civilized world, and of compelling the
submission of the people of the Isthmus to those
whom they regarded as oppressors, we shall, as in
duty bound, keep the transit open and prevent its
invasion. Meanwhile, the only question now before
us is that of the ratification of the treaty. For it
is to be remembered that a failure to ratify the
treaty will not undo what has been done, will not
restore Panama to Colombia, and will not alter
our obligation to keep the transit open across the
Isthmus, and to prevent any outside power from
menacing this transit.
It seems to have been assumed in certain quarters
that the proposition that the obligations of article
35 of the treaty of 1846 are to be considered as
adhering to and following the sovereignty of the
Isthmus, so long as that sovereignty is not absorbed
by the United States, rests upon some novel theory.
No assumption could be further from the fact. It
is by no means true that a state in declaring its
independence rids itself of all the treaty obligations
entered into by the parent government. It is a mere
coincidence that this question was once raised in a
case involving the obligations of Colombia as an
independent state under a treaty which Spain had
made with the United States many years before
Spanish-American independence. In that case Mr.
John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, in an instruction
to Mr. Anderson, our minister to Colombia,
of May 27, 1823, said:
By a treaty between the United States and Spain
concluded at a time when Colombia was a part of
the Spanish dominions ... the principle that free
ships make free goods was expressly recognized
and established. It is asserted that by her declaration
of independence Colombia has been entirely released
from all the obligations by which, as a part
of the Spanish nation, she was bound to other nations.
This principle is not tenable. To all the
engagements of Spain with other nations, affecting
their rights and interests, Colombia, so far as she
was affected by them, remains bound in honor and
in justice. The stipulation now referred to is of
that character.
The principle thus asserted by Mr. Adams was
afterward sustained by an international commission
in respect to the precise stipulation to which he referred;
and a similar position was taken by the
United States with regard to the binding obligation
upon the independent State of Texas of commercial
stipulations embodied in prior treaties between the
United States and Mexico when Texas formed a
part of the latter country. But in the present case
it is unnecessary to go so far. Even if it be admitted
that prior treaties of a political and commercial
complexion generally do not bind a new state
formed by separation, it is undeniable that stipulations
having a local application to the territory
embraced in the new state continue in force and are
binding upon the new sovereign. Thus it is on all
hands conceded that treaties relating to boundaries
and to rights of navigation continue in force without
regard to changes in government or in sovereignty.
This principle obviously applies to that
part of the treaty of 1846 which relates to the
Isthmus of Panama.
In conclusion let me repeat that the question
actually before this Government is not that of the
recognition of Panama as an independent republic.
That is already an accomplished fact. The question,
and the only question, is whether or not we
shall build an Isthmian Canal.
I transmit herewith copies of the latest notes from
the minister of the Republic of Panama to this Government,
and of certain notes which have passed
between the special envoy of the Republic of Colombia
and this Government.
Theodore Roosevelt.
White House,
January 4, 1904
