Crawfordsville Weekly Journal, Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, 28 February 1902 — Page 2

2

10NE LIFE'S MEANING

^Senator Beveridge Gives An Estimate

of Washington's Influence On

History.

NEED OF AMERICAN CHARACTER

,The Cultivation of Discipline, That

Force for Which Washington Stood

So Largely, Is Urged in Eloquent

Terms Amid Fitting Surroundings.

Following is the address delivered by the Hon. Albert J. Uf-vcndge undev the auspices oi the Union League Club, aT the Auditorium, Chicago, on the a'"tenioi,u oi Feb. Tl, 19U2 .. 1 .actios and Gentlemen:

The raetunug of Washington in American history

JS

discipline. The

message of Washington's lile to the American people is discipline. The need ol American character is the cultivation of discipline. "Washington did not give patriotism to the American colonies. The people had that as abundantly as he. He did not give them courage. That, quality was and is in the American blood. He did not. even give them resource. There were intellects more productive than his. Hut Washington gave balance and direction to elemental forces. He was the genius ol order. I-Ie was poise personified. He was the spirit of discipline. He was the great conservative. It was this that made all other elements ol the Revolution effective. It was this that organized a nel*ilous independence into a nation of liberty. The parts ol" a machine are useless until assembled and fitted each to its appropriate place. "Washington did that. And so it is that we are a people.

But we are not yet a perfect people any more than a youth is yet a perlect man. We are yet In the making. It is a glorious circumstance. Youth is the noblest ot God's great gifts. The lire of a nation is like the life of a man. Head the history of a people who have done things in their day. Read the lite of a man who has done things in his day. They are as similar as sea and ocean. It is only a Question ol magnitude. The American people are young? Yes. Vital? Yes. Powerful? Yes.. Masterful? Yes. Disciplined? Not entirely. Reserved? Not yet, but will be. .Moderate? Not yet, but growing 111 that grace. And therefore on this, his day, I bear you the message of Washington—he, v.'hose sanity, orderliness and calm have reached through the century, (steadying us when untamed passions ol riotous youth had all but reached the climax of chaos.

The American people have finally overcome every convulsion? True. The element of sobriety has never failed to master the maddest agitations? True again. But the cost of the struggle in every instance has been measured by the strength of the Instinct of discipline? at the time. Today wc are calm, and are conscious of no need ot sell-restraint. Yes! But yesterday we were delirious, and the rumble ol cannon 011 your streets and the raule of musketry at your doors was hailed with leelings of security and relief. And many crises may be recalled by men not yet oki. The political convulsion ot live years ago is a peacetul example ot popular hysteria, overcome by strenuous work that tested the powers ot conservatism to the ultimate limit. Popular reserve, the Kelt-restraint ol the people, the fireside conference, would have lessened every excited circumstance 3n our history, and prevented many or most of them. Reason is better than bayonets. Sober second thought is better than the destrovmg violence of a campaign over passion-born propositions. The Labor and Capital Arbitration

Committee.

In the daily press we read of a cooperative council of capitalists, clerg.-, •workers and publicists to settle the conflicts between labor and productive wealth. We applaud it, and we should. Hut not because it will be effective— ior it may not be effective. Hut we hail it as an evidence that the spirit 01 forbearance is spreading among the people. It is an expression of the instinct, ot order which must become the ruling element in American c-ivili-Jtatiou. And this it is which, more and wore, will settle strikes, and in the end prevent them. This it is which, more and more will take wlltlness out of our politics, until reasonable issues only remain. The remedy lor friction between employer and employed is in the breasts of the men themselves and their employers. The. saving of the people is in the hands of the people themselves, and nowhere else. Better than councils and commissions and congresses is the sell-discipline, the reasoning reserve, the regulated conscience of a free people. And congresses and councils are effective only as they are expressions of this.

Indeed, we have awakened to thv fundamental fact that written laws are not everything and that the people are everything* Back of our statutes stands our constitution, and back of our constitution stands our institutions. and back of our institutions stands our race. Let us remember that the people are the real foundation not laws, not even constitutions. It is the people from which statutes, constitutions and even institutions spring that give these forms of civil method their meaning. The constitution of this republic would be a different instrument as the fun­

damental law of a Latin nation even though that nation copied it word for word. It would be interpreted by their racial spirit., expounded in the light of their racial institutions. Every day since our constitution was adopted we have been acting beyond the limits of its written word, but within the limits of its institutional meaning. If we had not done so we would not now be a nation. Word of the Constitution Inadequate.

More ami more this will be so. The growth of modern industry, the gradual change of competition into co-operation, the manifold and infinitely interwoven activities of modern business, the steady knitting together of all the agencies of production, distribution and exchange, until the whole nation is well nigli an industrial unit as it is a political unit, the extension of this process until international relations are so interlaced that 110 nation, even by war, can entirely cut the golden cords of commerce and culture that bind her to her sisters—the processes of civilization, in short—bring into play national necessities and national powers as much greater and more complex than those exercised by the fathers, as the nation and its activities today are greater and more complex than they were a century ago. We (.'an not adopt new constitutions to meet, those new conditions. They would be inadequate if we did adopt, them, and each decade would make the constitution of the preceding decade obsolete if its letter alone were read. And so Ave rely on a law more permanent and more vital—the institutional law with its roots springing from the very soul of our race, by whose living meaning our written laws and constitutions are interpreted. Our hope is in ourselves. Our safety is in our racial customs and tendencies. Our salvation and supremacy is in the character of our people. 1 do not mean that we should bind ourselves to custom. 1 am only a limited believer in the philosophy of precedent. Precedent becomes paralysis, if observed when customs no longer fit conditions. Conservatism does not mean adherence to existing order merely because it is existing order. Conservatism mean/ the adaptation of means to ends naturally and without violence. Reason is the touchstone of conservatism. And so it is that we must foster the element of conservatism in American character as we would fan the spark of life itself, for it is that vital spark. Let the American people write over the fireside of every American home those words of inspired direction: "Prove all things—hold fajst to that which is good." Time is the greater reasoner. Patience is the eternal method of accuracy and truth. Time and patience, patience and time—these are the ancient counsellors who never err. These are the sages to consult when perplexing situations seem unsolvable. Beware of instantaneous processes.

Hot-House Laws Ineffective.

There can be no instantaneous settlement of any large question. To say that there could be, is to say that civilization itself could be completed by piecemeal. But that is not the method of civilization's progress. Society is a growth—not a creation. And all social, industrial and political questions are related as a tree's branches to the common trunk. They are not. therefore, to be determined permanently by cure-all measures and put aside as settled, as you pack articles in a box and put it on a shelf, sealed and labeled. Conditions undergo ceaseless change, and measures made for those conditions must also undergo ceaseless change. But if the change'is wise it must be slow, and not sudden. The wrenching of the vast and delicate machinery of the nation's business, the straining of the nerves of the whole people in unnecessary campaigns, has been due to impossible propositions to instantly enact felicity. This Is not discipline, not sanity. It is not reason, but passion not reserve, but rashness.

On the other hand, measures once enacted are not immortal. No economic statute can be perpetual. To say that it can never be bettered is to say that, human conditions can never be bettered. But they can be bettered. Yesterday we lumbered in stages today we fly in palaces. And the change from stage-coach to railway has required a new body of laws, which are themselves perpetually changing. Yesterday both capital and labor were individualized today both are consolidated, systematized, co-op-erative. The old laws no longer fit the case. But these new conditions grew out of the old conditions—they were not. suddenly created. And so we must let the new laws regulating those new conditions, grow, and not suddenly create them. Quick creations always are ineffective. Conditions make laws, not laws condition. And when this order is reversed both the law-made conditions and the law which makes them are unhealthy, irritating and dangerous. Events are the greatest of law-makers. Deliberation, patience and the self-regulation of our activities are the surest of safeguards. Put not your faith in written word alone put your faith in your own steady self-restraint. "The letter killeth hut the spirit giveth life." As in your relations to morals, you remember the Master and strive to be like Him so in your relations to the state and your attitude toward all questions that present themselves to you as one o£ a self-governing people, remember Washington and strive to he like him —reserved, considering, considerate and calm.

The national habit of self-control exercised in the current developments of each day, when times are not hot

with friction, will act without effort In the hour when events flame with excitement. If the people will adopt this formula of conservative thought: Everything is not bad because it is new, and everything is not good because it is old—and upon that formula base conservative procedure, we shall always end with conservative results. And conservative results are Bafe results and safe progress is permanent progress. Let us beware of rebounds.

Treatment of Trusts of Labor and Capital.

are in a period of growth which is itself a proof of our youth and enlarging vitality. It is inevitable that each year, almost each day, shall behold unheard-of developments in our industrial, commercial, financial methods. Let us be not startled at them. They may be beneficent or they may be malevolent, but denunciation, hasty action, conclusions which are jumped at instead of being thought out, are no proper test. The habit of mind which leads us to bitterly denounce or unreservedly praise, is not the temper which a free people should foster. For be it remembered that a free people must depend upon themselves and not upon some separate power which attempts to solve every problem l'or them, as is the the case in autocracies. We are fond of saying that in a republic each citizen is a king. But saying so does not make it so. Each of us can be a king, and therefore the nation itself clothed with majesty as no people ever were arrayed but only by each citizen acting as a king should act thinking as a king should think, steadily, calmly, with balanced judgment and well-considered action.

The new developments in the combinations of capital call for just such popular treatment the increasing development in combinations of labor calls for just such treatment. We behold millions of money which yesterday were acting separately, today massed in mighty organizations for the production, the transportation, the distribution of national products. Let us not be alarmed at their magnitude. Let us not be paniced at their novelty. It is not helpful to slap on the statute books hasty screeds and call them laws. It will throw no light upon the real question for excited meetings to grow frenzied over excited appeals. No great problem was ever illuminated by the torch of a mob and between the conflagrations of the Commune and fiery talk of agitators who feel they must carry the next election at any cost, there is little difference. Both may be useful in revolution both may be useful in the bloody overthrow of tyranny but neither are the method of a free people, who hold their, own destiny in their own hands.

Work of the Trusts.

It is apparent to the shallowest observer and certain to the profoundest, that the great combinations of capital recently developed are based upon some of the fundamental principles of progress. It is equally apparent and certain that in their development, evils and crudities have attended them. But this is true of everything. It is even true of the development of a child into a boy and of a boy into a man and constant care is exercised in the training of the infant mind and character. Maturity is a hard process and slow, but it is a simple process. Let as simple a process be exercised in the new development of our social economy. As violence and hot words and stormy conduct spoil the vision of the parent, so will the same savage methods spoil the vision and make foolish the action of the people in the regulation of the development of capital and labor. The great combinations of capital devoted to the production of steel or flour or meats or oil, systematize the industry, reduce 'the expense of production, simplify and make easy distribution, invade and conquer foreign markets. The organization of wealth devoted to the preparation of meats and other foodstuffs sell their products abroad as well as here. Their vast resources enable them to put refrigerating ships upon the sea and furnish the breakfast tables of London and Berlin. And to supply that foreign demand the farmers of Illinois, Dakota and Kansas are called upon for cattle at profitable prices which otherwise they could not sell at all. So we see that this golden shuttle of modern enterprise shooting backward and forward, not only through our own land, but across the seas and into Europe and Asia, too, weaves occupation and prosperity for our citizens in its ministry to the wants of our fellow-men abroad. The same is true of other illustrations of this same development. The diggers of iron and coal, the mclders of steel, the workers in factories of cotton and wool are kept employed by the wrestling of the markets of the world out of the hands of our national competitors.

These area few of the benefits visible to all. On the other hand, the arbitrary raising and lowering of prices, the unjust exaction of unfair profits from our own consumers, are the evils. But the benefits are fundamental, and the evils incidental. And you cannot shear away the good from the had by some measure evolved over night from an excited brain and adopted next day as a party measure to carry an election the day after. The whole field of national and even international industry and trade must be considered. When you reflect that you cannot do the simplest thing without Involving every activity of industrial civilization all over the world, you can appreciate how dangerous makeshift measures are. The simplest act of civilized life affects all human industry. Take, for example.

THE CRAWFORDSVILLE WEEKLY JOURNAL

youi journey home this afternoon in the cab or railway or street-car. It involves t.he growing ar felling of fdrests. It calls into play the energies of miners searching out the ore from which are made the wheels that csft-ry you. It involves the cattle from whose hides are made the harness of your horse, or the leather used in cars. It involves the activities, the lives and the livelihood of 10,000 men immediately at hand and broadening from •this center ot' focused activity, it circles out to the remotest confines of the world's industry. If so simple an act as your journey home this afternoon, to which you give no heed, so commonplace has it become, is thus far-reaching, how infinite in consequence are measures controlling these industries, and how vastly greater even is the policy of a people with reference to them. Do I say. therefore, that no measures should be taken no policy be formed? No, I say the reverse. But I say with greater earnestness, caused by the danger of unthoughtl'ul and uniliscipined action, that those measures and that policy should be w^ll considered, cautiously adopted, executed with sanity and judgment. iC-i- 'I

Change in Character of Capitalists. On the other hand, this development is having its beneficial effect upon the capitalists themselves. Responsibility always brings a broader understanding and a gentler consideration of others. And dealing, as the managers of these vast agencies of production and exchange are with all the people of the nation, and wellnigh with all the world, a new comprehension of those people is forced upon the capitalist, whether he will or 110. The financier of the 20tli century has got to be more than a financier. The modern financier must be a statesman. The day of the local Wall street capitalist is passed. The hour when the wizard of tricks sat in his office and considered that the world of money was compassed by his eye-sight, was struck yesterday, and that hour is no more forever. Today the capitalist can no longer indulge in the legerdemain of mere stock speculation. lie must build machinery he must erect mills he must construct railroads he must buy steamship lines. Therefore he must understand the people, he must consider the people. The financial rashness of the Black Fridays of our history was as much a manifestation of our undisciplined and capricious mode of undevelopment as was the burning of railroad properties at Pittsburg in the reu days now almost forgotten. Capitalists Must Consider the People.

And so we see capitalists have got to understand that the opinion of the people is as definite a factor in their great plans as the quantity of coal remaining in the mine or the producing capacity of a mill. As much a factor? Yes. infinitely more of a fac tor. For. after all. it is the consuming and producing capacity of the people upon which all industries are built. It is the thought and settled resolve of the people which is the most important element in the mosaic of our national economy. Thus have the constructive capitalists of America come to understand that public opinion must be taken into account as much as the amount of cash on hand or bills receivable. They have been forced to this, let us say, or they have learned it. No matter, they have come to understand it: and so we see that voluntarily the greatest corporation of the world has published to all the people a statement of its business and its operations, of its assets and its liabilities, of its products and its sales, of its history and its prospects. That is the thing which the financier of ten years ago would have called chimerical, foolish, the unwise pandering of the theorist to the curiosity of the crowd. But the financier of the 20th century "no longer calls it so. He knows it is not so. He knows that it is a necessity of his business—a thing essential to the popular support of his enterprise, another great corporation of Illinois whose managing mind appears to be a statesman as well as a financier, began some three or four years ago to distribute the stock of his railroad among its employes, and to sell shares at lowest terms to the people living along its line. Ten years ago that would have been called socialism—today it is business. It is conservatism. It is the realization of things as they are and the adjustment tjf the measures of wisdom and humanity to existing conditions, in order that the best of existing conditions may be preserved, and from them still better conditions may be evolved. All this is sanity all this is calm and gentle "ind considerate thought all this is the beginning of that discipline which comes from self-restraint and the respect for the rights and opinions of our fellow*.

Labor Trusts.

Organizations of labor are cognate to the organizations of capital. Each is the outgrowth of that principle of co-operation which is the eery spirit of civilized society. The family is cooperation a partnership is co-opera-tion the simplest form of a state is co-operation which is the very spirit more perfect, its citizens more and more co-operate each with all and all with each. Neither labor organizations, therefore, nor those of capital are unnatural or harmful. But the tyranny of greed may pervert the one the tyranny of passion may ruin the other. Considerate moderation Is the safety of both, and It each were to adopt It. it would lie their glory as well. And If capital will not he reasonable, If labor will not he reasonable, the people will be reasonable for them. There 1b no place In this country for the absolutist of capital There Is 110 place In this country for the absolutist of riot. The bully of wealth shaking his clenched list of sold, is wealth's worst enemy. Tim bully of laborshouting denunciation Is labor's worst enemy. Let the wtser laborer elbow from

his company, him of the flaiqlng uteranee and untruthful tongue. Let the wiser capitalists suppress their would-be czars Out with the element of unreason in both camps, and the divided hosts will be one! Out with unreason everywhere in the republic! Let' the spirit: of Washington be monarch of the hearts and 111I1: of men everywhere ticiieatli the llag which Washington established.

As tile L'Oth century financier must be a statesman, so the 1:111 ti century labor lender must be a statesman, too. He too must consider the people's thought. lie too must measure popular tendencies. Tic too must counsel act without weighing ilie effect that act will have throughout the whole complicated machinery of related and interdependent Industries. And such statesmanship is being evolved. A man cannot long remain the head of one of the great armies of organized workers without developing powers of conservatism. Necessity teaches him (he value of moderation. "When ho feels his hand upon the lever that directs the movements of a hundred thousand toilers, his awful responsibility Instructs him in the value of self-restraint. The events of the last two years have proved that the directing heads of two of the greatest labor trusts are conservative counsellors. Their number will increase. More and more the organizations of labor will insist: that their leaders shall be men of thought, slow to wrath, steady in action. More and more they will come to Appreciate that a leader is none the less loyul because Lie is wise.

Tlctw la LLLU wnjesty of Lut*dariu tion! These are the aggrps.«fre tfhilmd** of tho times xvhen the calm of Washington councils prudence, self-restraint, tile holding well in hand of the people's thought ami action by the people themselves. And there are retrogressive tendencies as well to which the spit-it of Washington cqualiy applies. The fanaticism of existing conditions is the reverse of the shield. It is as unreasoning 10 say that an outgrown law shall not be modified as it is to say that immature statutes shall be enaeteii. One is the hysteria of precedent the other Is the hysteria of alarm. -Men say "Down with the tarill"! .Men say "Maintain the tariff," or "Lift it higher still." Conservatism says. "You both are wrong—adjust the tariff to conditions. Tariff lnereiv for protection is no fetish: tariff for men- revenue is no Cod. No system of taxation is sacred. It is merely a means to an end or many ends. It is«not an end in itself." This is tlie voice of conservatism and it is the voice of I ruth anil soberness.

We have entered upon an era of production that overwhelms our very understanding. It was not so yesterday. Yesterdav we made little we did not want ourselves, and so the "home niarUeL" was "Hiea the word of economic truth and that word spoke into life a system of protect inn as perfectly lit ted for its purpose as ever the mind of man devised. .Mills, factories, railroads, farms, mines-a thousand forms ot productive industry developed magically and over all the busy genius of invention brooded, making one hand do that which thousands toiled to do before, fertilizing fields, abbreviating space, extracting gold from hopeless rocks, discovering wealth and human uses the verv refuse of a cruder day. And so It chine* to pass that our home market is supplied and the overflowing surplus threatens to choke the the very machinery thai produces it unless we iind a place to sell that, surplus. And so it is that today progress speaks new word of economic truth as needful now as was the old word then. As the home market was the word of wisdom in its season, so "foreign markets" is the word of wisdom now. ^, have more coal, more iron, more skill in workmanship, more ability and experience in organizing capital for products uses than any other portion of the globe- almost more than all of the rest of the world combined. And so we .soil abroad our girders, beams and plates of steel and the many forms into which wealth and work and genius have fashioned the useful metuls. \\~e must sell Oieni abroad, fjruerwlse, idle over his accumulated prodc will sit the laborer lifeless will be throbbing mill deserted the produ,.V mine chained to tlie rotting docks the ships ot export. And this is true of the fabrics of cotton and of wool true of meats, flour and all the stuffs that feed and clothe the human race. For other nations have factories, too. other nations spin and weave, and plant and sow and roap. hoy will not always permit us to supply their citizens. The words "home market." which yesterday was our talisman, tomorrow will be theirs, and for the same reason that: it was once ours. Conditions have turned the tables and where yesterday we asked protection from them, today they are demanding protection from us. They will erect tariff flails against 11s as we once erected tariff walls against them. V\ here, then, shall we turn with our ships of morchaiidts-j? What, then, will be the destination of our weighted trains of freight? Not to ourselves, for wo are already supplied, and it is 011 surplus thai: lilis those ships and burdens those countless cars of commerce. We cannot, turn entirely to the Orient for that market is not vet sufficiently understood, although it will be. Jt Is' not vet sutlcientiy exploited, although it will be it is not yet oiir monopoly, although it will be. And when the Oriental market is opened in its fullness and monopolized iUS' ,lt

vYi"

bu our

commercial and llnnn-

clal salvation. But that i» a question for tomorrow. We must consider the requirements of todav. \\e must turn to the "Instant need of things. AA must make those common sense arrangements with our neighbors among the nations by wtilch our surplus of Amotion 11 products may he taken across the seas. This is the statesmanship of common sense. Tlie eye of Blaine perceived it in the distance, and too soon announced Hs principle. The even more prophet!? niind of Grant, whoso elemental statesmanship will be better appreciated a hundred years from now than it is todav perceived it even before Blaine saw it And even if both had failed to grasp its meaning, that meaning would be unmistakable at this hour, for gradually foreign statesmen are closing their markets to us. They will do It more swiftlv in the future than they have done it in the past, or else they will fail in their duties to their peoples. The miraculous growth of our export trade is lessening and on the other hand our productiveness waxes uutil its ma~nitude today makes little its proportions of yesterday, which then were wonderful. Decreasing markets, increasing productions —this is the situation. It is not a situation that calls for fanaticism in favor of any law It is not a situation that calls for fanaticism in favor of the destruction of any law.

It was a wisdom higher than our own that drove us into the markets of the world. You may say that it was the wisdom of events. You may say it was the wisdom that springs from the wealth of our resources and the ingenuity of our brains and the skill of our lingers. I prefer to believe and do believe that It was a wisdom higher still, the universal wisdom of the Father. And it was His wisdom, too, that placed in our guardianship new peoples and alien races. You may say that It is a blunder that did that. I will not quarrel with you. You may say that it was a conjunction of circumstances. I will not argue the point. Whatever the compelling cause, the fact exists and the dutv Is ours. Call It circumstance, call It events, call it blunder, or cnll it the decree of destiny—other peoples are our wards and we will not desert them. Their lands are our trust and we will not betrav It. iAil will admit that if we could succeed In discharging this trust so that these dependent peoples would be happier, our nation better and the civilization of the world thereby ndvanced, it would be a noble conclusion for which the most doubtful heart might yearn. All this we may accomplish. All this we will accomplish. Let no man doubt our ultimate success, for we will proceed according to the councils of conservatism. Moderation will direct us.

We daily hear dogmatic demands for the independence of our Malay wards, without considering concrete conditions. Is this moderation? Is this the method of calm reason? Is It not better to And the facts and fit onr acts to these? Adaptability Is the American characteristic. We are told that self-government Is the American characteristic. We are told that this and that is the American characteristic. We are asked to frame our action upon this tradition or that, regardless of changed situations, of absolutely different facts. But adaptability is the American characteristic. Adaptability, adaptability, adaptability. The fitting of means to ends, the adjustment of measures to conditions—this Is the heart of Americanism. The secrtet of American success has Teen that we have looked the facts squarely In the face and then made our measures fit those facts. We hav Sone this regardless of maxims, Indifferent to theories and even over the letter of our constitution Itself when It stood In the way. President Madison

thoiight that the federal government had no power to build a national highway. The [lower to make ilnernai Improvements was not conferred 011 congress by the constitution. he said. This was the view or the fathers. It I vers, roads nud liurbors were matters of local concern, they thought. The theory of local self-govern-ment, the sovereignty of the state, the independence of the community, required that tho national government should not better local conditions, if a river was nunnavigable ut a point within a state through which it run, it was not the mission of the general government to dredge It. Its care was in the keeping of the people who liveu upon its banks. Local self-government, they said, w'as an end and not a means. But progress said that the prosperity of tlie people is the end, and local self-gov-ernment. general government, or any other kind of government nothing but a means. Progress said: "The logic of strict construction is built on words 1 demand logic built on facts." And so info the written constitution thu necessities of national intercourse read the power of the general government to make internal Improvements. And today that power is so much a matter of course that not one man iti ten thousand knows that that power was originally denied. Thus it was that the spirit of American adaptability triumphed even over the letter of the constitution. Business is tijo great expounder of our fundamental law. Conditions construe our constitution more completely than all tin: lawyers who ever lived, tocography. Invention. exploration, arc the Immortal interpreters of that great instrument. Mountains. rivers, plains and laUSs, railways, telegraphs, tlie planting of new communities. tlie discovery of new resources, the Interchange of thought and products- to these great natural and human facts the spirit American adaptability lias conformed ancient customs, honored traditions. written constitutions. There i1 no written power in the constitution for the national government to charter banks, but a man would be considered mad today who dented that power to the national government'. Tlie list of instances where the practical genius of the American people lias adapted their constitution to their needs is the most, striking circumstance of our history and the profoundest proof of their vitality. From that saving wisdom of adaptability we will not now depart, if Philippine conditions require Filipino self-government, self government we will give the Filipinos, because it is wise. If legislative participation in their government is permitted by Porto

Kican conditions, we will give the l'orto lileans that because it is wise, it Cuban conditions require American suzerainty, we will maintain that because it Is wise if annexation, wo will accomplish that, because it is wise: if utter separation that shall be done because it is wise. 11 facts demand that, we administer government in our Far-Eastern possessions without tlie participation of 1111 Incompetent people, that government we will ourselves administer, because It is wise. We art wedded to no theory wo are chained to no catch-word our free hand is not fettered by any unchangeable method. It Washington thought that Christmas Day. drunken Hessians and all tho elements of surprise existed, he crossed the Delaware and attacked like another Attlla. If he thought that overwhelming British forces, discouraged American troops and ail tlie elements of weakness in his own rank» required avoidance of conflict, he retreated like another l'abius. That is the American spirit. And so with our new m\d worldwide duties. If facts demand autonomy for our possessions, autonomy it shall bp. If facts demand guardianship at our hands, guardianship it shall be. Over the American mind and heart and directing American action, tlie genius of the practical still presides. We are no China cursed with custom. drugged and dead with precedent. We are Americans-1he people of the :ippropriate and tUe adaptable.

The treatment of our dependencies i» tbe world issue lioiv confronting us. Let us then pluut ourselves ou tho fundamental Curtaiutlus. And the first of these certainties is that not one single foot of soil ovei which American civil authority is established will ever be abandoned. "What we have, we hold!"—this is the voice of 0111 race. People of our blood never leuve land they have occupied. No master peoplo evei yieids while they remain a master people. Knicrsou declares that when the powers of a man decline he draws In his enterprise lie ii'.iits business lie prepares for the inevitable end. The same is true ol a people. But the American people art not on the decline. The American peoplu arc Hot ready to go out of business. The American people are stronger for tht! world's work now than any people evai were before. And our portiou of the world's work, which destiny lias laid upon the younger and tlie growing races, is the duty and labor of guardianship. We are the executors of a trust estate In l'orto Itieo, in Cuba, in the Philippines. That trust we will execute as thoroughly aa Americans do everything. And so Ameri. can government in the Philippines will bo permanent. The American Hag in l'orto ltieo will float there as long as the republic's government itself shall stand. American suzerainty over Culm will remain until time laces that island more closely to us with more enduring bonds. Kvents call for the conservatism of adaptability. Conditions demand tlie moderation of the frea hand. The radicalism of ancient luethoda has 110 place among new conditions. Hemember the parable of the new wine in the old bottles. What would we say if the ancient mariner should step from his vessel of wood and sail and spars and rope» onto tlie bridge of a l_'0tli century ocean liner, and declare that the steam which drove it. tlie electricity which lighted It, "he steel plates, the copper bottoms ano all tho method of modern shipbuilding arc ^sacrilege, becaties ho had not done in that way? This hoary representative of a day that is dead would not be considered con* servative. The board of directors that Would place him in command of a Deutsehland or a Lucanin would not be considered conservative. Moderation means the progress of facts—not the daring of dreams on the one hand nor yet: the cowardice of reminiscence on tho other. And so with the dependencies of the American republic. American statesmen must deal as practical thought directed to actual conditions demands thar they should deal. They must not deal spasmodically.

But in this great problem of our dependencies, more even than in the surprising developments of our Internal economy, patience is the word of power and of success. A race cannot be transformed over night. The methods of three centuries cannot be remedied between sunrise and sunset. The character of a people is not to be altered even by the school teachers' priceless work in a season or a year. Let us not be in haste. Let us have the serenity of the situation. We are dealing with an elemental problem, a racial problem, a worid question. We must act, therefore, with deliberation as large and a patience as steady as the problem is vast and historic. We must employ no magic but time, no legerdemain but that of steady and continuous effort unvarying and undismayed. There must be no spasms of extravagance, 110 spasms of retrenchment, no panic of retreat, no fury of advance.

So. fellow-citizens, we will go on In the spirit and method of Washington, practically, steadily, calmly, without prejudice and without fear. Whatever the future may hold for the American people in internal development or foreign dominion, that future will lie met with that thoughtful moderation which adapts means to ends. If old methods suffice, those bid methods we will use because they are approved. If present methods sufllce, present methods we will use because they are at hand. If new methods are necessary, new methods we will Invent because the case demands then The fanaticism of the old will not Influence the American people. The fanaticism of the new will not influence the American people. The conservatism of adaptability, the calmness of the appropriate, the patience necessary for the doioy of the work In hand whatever that workmay be—these are the saving influence* which will govern American action no--nnd hereafter. The discipline of the day work, the balanced judgment that accomplishes real things, the steady sanity essential to the settlement of actual situation« —these are the counsellors which now and henceforth tho American people will consult. Neither passion nor fear, neither theory nor precedent, neither imagination nor Impulse, shall corrupt In the American character that orderly adaptability which has been the very soul of American progress. And before these Influences of light every cloud that fear discerns on our horizon^ will dissolve every Impassable ocean whlfch imagination sees in our pathway will' be safely crossed every foe wliich foresight beholds In the distance will be vanquished, and the flag which Washington unfurled will float over ever-broadening horizons brightening every hour with increasing glories of actnal achievement.