Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1907 — LAUD’S M’KINLEY'S LIFE. [ARTICLE]

LAUD’S M’KINLEY'S LIFE.

President Roaaevrlt Speaks at Tomb ot Martyred President. President Roosevelt, speaking at the dedication of McKinley mausoleum In Canton, said: We have gathered to-day tq pay our meed of respect and affection to the memory of William McKinley, Who as President won a place in the hearts of the American people such as but three or four of all the Presidents of this country have ever won. He was of singular uprightness and purity of character, alike in public and in private life; a citizen who loved peace, he did his duty faithfully and well for fotir years of war when tho honor of the nation called him to arms. As Congressman, as Governor of his State, and finally as President, he rose to the foremost place among our statesmen, reaching a position which would satisfy the keenest ambition; but he never lost that simple and thoughtful kindness toward human being, great or small, lofty or humble, with whom he was brought into contact, which so endeared him to our people. He had to grapple with more serious and cofcqilex problems than any President since Lincoln, and yet, while meeting every demand of statesmanship, he continued to live a beautiful and touching famto see in its foremost citizen; and now the woman who walked in the shadow even after his death, the wife to whom his loss was a calamity more crushing than it could be i/to any other human being, lies beside him here in the same sepulcher.

Career Teaches Many LeMOut. Here the PresiTe&t-rpade his allusions to the epitaph written—t)y Dr. "Wheeler and chosen by Secretary Ilay. Continuing, he said: , Many lessons jire taught us by his career, but none" tnbre valuable than the lesson of .broad human sympathy for and among all of our citizens of all*'classes and creeds. No other President has-ever-more deserved to have his life work characterized in Lincoln’s words as being carried on “with malice toward none, with charity toward all.” As a boy he worked hard with his hands; he entered the army as aTprivate soldier; he knew poverty ; he earned his-own livelihood, and by his own exertions he finally rose to the position of a man of moderate means. Not merely was he in personal touch with farmer and town dw’eller, with capitalist and wage-worker, but he felt an intimate understanding of each and therefore an intimate sympathy with each ; and his consistent effort was to try to judge all by the same standard and to treat all with the same justice. Arrogance toward the weak, and envious hatred of those well off, were equally abhorrent to his just and gentle soul. Surely this attitude of liis should be the attitude of all our people to-day. It would be a cruel disaster to this country to permit ourselves to adopt an attitude of hatred and envy toward success worthily won, toward wealth honestly acquired. Let us in this respect profit by the example of the republics of this western hemisphere to the south of us. Some of these republics have prospered greatly ; but there are certain ones that have lagged far behind, that still continue in a condition of material poverty, of social and political unrest and confusion. Without exception the republics of the former class are those in which honest industry has been assured of reward and protection; those where a cordial welcome has been extended to the kind of enterprise which benefits the whole country, while incidentally, as is right and proper, giving substantial rewards to those who manifest it. On the other hand, the poor and backward republics, the republics in

which the lot of the average citizen is. least desirable, and the lot of the tailoring man worst of all are precisely those in which industry has been killed because wealth exposed its owner to spoliation. To these communities foreign capital now rarely comes, because it has been found that as soon as capital is employed so as to give substantial remuneration to those supplying it, it excites ignorant envy and hostility, which results in such oppressive action, within or without the law, as sooner or later to work a virtual confiscation. Every manifestation of feeling of this kind in our civilization should be crushed at the outset by the weight of a sensible public opinion. From the standpoint of our material prosperity there is only one other thing as important as the discouragement of a "spirit of envy and hostility toward honest business men, toward honest men of means; this is the discouragement of dishotrest business men, the war upon the chicanery and wrongdoing which are peculiarly, repulsive, peculiarly noxious, when exhibited by men who have no excuse of want, of poverty, of ignorance, for their crimes. All Cannot Banal Him. Wrongdoing is confined to no class. Good and evil are to be found among both rich and poor, and in drawing the line among our fellows we must draw it on conduct and not on worldly possessions. In the abstract most of us will admit this. In the concrete we can act upon such doctrine only if we really have knowledge of and sympathy with ofie another. * If both the wage-worker and the capitalist are able to enter each into the other’s life, to meet him so as to get into genuine sympathy with him, most of the -misunderstanding between them will disappear and its place will be taken by a judgment broader, juster, more kindly and more generous; for each will find in the other the same essential human attributes that exist in himself. It was President McKinley’s peculiar glory /tfiat in actual practice he realized this «u it is given to but few men to realize it\that his broad and deep sympathies, made mm feel a genuine sense of oneness with all bis fellow Americans, whatever tbelr station or work in life, so that to his soul they were all joined with him in a great brotherly democracy of the spirit. It is not given to many of us in our lives actually to realize this attitude to the extent that be did, but we can at least have it before us as the goal of onr endeavor, and by so doing we shall pay honor better than in any other way to the memory of the dead President whose services in ljfe we this day commemorate. - The first newspaper Jn Kentucky was the Gazette, Issued in August, 178?, at Lexington, by John Fielding Brad ford.