To the Senate and House of Representatives:

The Nation continues to enjoy noteworthy prosperity. Such prosperity is
of course primarily due to the high individual average of our
citizenship, taken together with our great natural resources; but an
important factor therein is the working of our long-continued
governmental policies. The people have emphatically expressed their
approval of the principles underlying these policies, and their desire
that these principles be kept substantially unchanged, although of
course applied in a progressive spirit to meet changing conditions.

The enlargement of scope of the functions of the National Government
required by our development as a nation involves, of course, increase
of expense; and the period of prosperity through which the country is
passing justifies expenditures for permanent improvements far greater
than would be wise in hard times. Battle ships and forts, public
buildings, and improved waterways are investments which should be made
when we have the money; but abundant revenues and a large surplus
always invite extravagance, and constant care should be taken to guard
against unnecessary increase of the ordinary expenses of government.
The cost of doing Government business should be regulated with the same
rigid scrutiny as the cost of doing a private business.

In the vast and complicated mechanism of our modern civilized life the
dominant note is the note of industrialism; and the relations of
capital and labor, and especially of organized capital and organized
labor, to each other and to the public at large come second in
importance only to the intimate questions of family life. Our peculiar
form of government, with its sharp division of authority between the
Nation and the several States, has been on the whole far more
advantageous to our development than a more strongly centralized
government. But it is undoubtedly responsible for much of the
difficulty of meeting with adequate legislation the new problems
presented by the total change in industrial conditions on this
continent during the last half century. In actual practice it has
proved exceedingly difficult, and in many cases impossible, to get
unanimity of wise action among the various States on these subjects.
From the very nature of the case this is especially true of the laws
affecting the employment of capital in huge masses.

With regard to labor the problem is no less important, but it is
simpler. As long as the States retain the primary control of the police
power the circumstances must be altogether extreme which require
interference by the Federal authorities, whether in the way of
safeguarding the rights of labor or in the way of seeing that wrong is
not done by unruly persons who shield themselves behind the name of
labor. If there is resistance to the Federal courts, interference with
the mails, or interstate commerce, or molestation of Federal property,
or if the State authorities in some crisis which they are unable to
face call for help, then the Federal Government may interfere; but
though such interference may be caused by a condition of things arising
out of trouble connected with some question of labor, the interference
itself simply takes the form of restoring order without regard to the
questions which have caused the breach of order--for to keep order is a
primary duty and in a time of disorder and violence all other questions
sink into abeyance until order has been restored. In the District of
Columbia and in the Territories the Federal law covers the entire field
of government; but the labor question is only acute in populous centers
of commerce, manufactures, or mining. Nevertheless, both in the
enactment and in the enforcement of law the Federal Government within
its restricted sphere should set an example to the State governments,
especially in a matter so vital as this affecting labor. I believe that
under modern industrial conditions it is often necessary, and even
where not necessary it is yet often wise, that there should be
organization of labor in order better to secure the rights of the
individual wage-worker. All encouragement should be given to any such
organization so long as it is conducted with a due and decent regard
for the rights of others. There are in this country some labor unions
which have habitually, and other labor unions which have often, been
among the most effective agents in working for good citizenship and for
uplifting the condition of those whose welfare should be closest to our
hearts. But when any labor union seeks improper ends, or seeks to
achieve proper ends by improper means, all good citizens and more
especially all honorable public servants must oppose the wrongdoing as
resolutely as they would oppose the wrongdoing of any great
corporation. Of course any violence, brutality, or corruption, should
not for one moment be tolerated. Wage-workers have an entire right to
organize and by all peaceful and honorable means to endeavor to
persuade their fellows to join with them in organizations. They have a
legal right, which, according to circumstances, may or may not be a
moral right, to refuse to work in company with men who decline to join
their organizations. They have under no circumstances the right to
commit violence upon these, whether capitalists or wage-workers, who
refuse to support their organizations, or who side with those with whom
they are at odds; for mob rule is intolerable in any form.

The wage-workers are peculiarly entitled to the protection and the
encouragement of the law. From the very nature of their occupation
railroad men, for instance, are liable to be maimed in doing the
legitimate work of their profession, unless the railroad companies are
required by law to make ample provision for their safety. The
Administration has been zealous in enforcing the existing law for this
purpose. That law should be amended and strengthened. Wherever the
National Government has power there should be a stringent employer's
liability law, which should apply to the Government itself where the
Government is an employer of labor.

In my Message to the Fifty-seventh Congress, at its second session, I
urged the passage of an employer's liability law for the District of
Columbia. I now renew that recommendation, and further recommend that
the Congress appoint a commission to make a comprehensive study of
employer's liability with the view of extending the provisions of a
great and constitutional law to all employments within the scope of
Federal power.

The Government has recognized heroism upon the water, and bestows
medals of honor upon those persons who by extreme and heroic daring
have endangered their lives in saving, or endeavoring to save, lives
from the perils of the sea in the waters over which the United States
has jurisdiction, or upon an American vessel. This recognition should
be extended to cover cases of conspicuous bravery and self-sacrifice in
the saving of life in private employments under the jurisdiction of the
United States, and particularly in the land commerce of the Nation.

The ever-increasing casualty list upon our railroads is a matter of
grave public concern, and urgently calls for action by the Congress. In
the matter of speed and comfort of railway travel our railroads give at
least as good service as those of any other nation, and there is no
reason why this service should not also be as safe as human ingenuity
can make it. Many of our leading roads have been foremost in the
adoption of the most approved safeguards for the protection of
travelers and employees, yet the list of clearly avoidable accidents
continues unduly large. The passage of a law requiring the adoption of
a block-signal system has been proposed to the Congress. I earnestly
concur in that recommendation, and would also point out to the Congress
the urgent need of legislation in the interest of the public safety
limiting the hours of labor for railroad employees in train service
upon railroads engaged in interstate commerce, and providing that only
trained and experienced persons be employed in positions of
responsibility connected with the operation of trains. Of course
nothing can ever prevent accidents caused by human weakness or
misconduct; and there should be drastic punishment for any railroad
employee, whether officer or man, who by issuance of wrong orders or by
disobedience of orders causes disaster. The law of 1901, requiring
interstate railroads to make monthly reports of all accidents to
passengers and employees on duty, should also be amended so as to
empower the Government to make a personal investigation, through proper
officers, of all accidents involving loss of life which seem to require
investigation, with a requirement that the results of such
investigation be made public.

The safety-appliance law, as amended by the act of March 2, 1903, has
proved beneficial to railway employees, and in order that its
provisions may be properly carried out, the force of inspectors
provided for by appropriation should be largely increased. This service
is analogous to the Steamboat-Inspection Service, and deals with even
more important interests. It has passed the experimental stage and
demonstrated its utility, and should receive generous recognition by
the Congress.

There is no objection to employees of the Government forming or
belonging to unions; but the Government can neither discriminate for
nor discriminate against nonunion men who are in its employment, or who
seek to be employed under it. Moreover, it is a very grave impropriety
for Government employees to band themselves together for the purpose of
extorting improperly high salaries from the Government. Especially is
this true of those within the classified service. The letter carriers,
both municipal and rural, are as a whole an excellent body of public
servants. They should be amply paid. But their payment must be obtained
by arguing their claims fairly and honorably before the Congress, and
not by banding together for the defeat of those Congressmen who refuse
to give promises which they can not in conscience give. The
Administration has already taken steps to prevent and punish abuses of
this nature; but it will be wise for the Congress to supplement this
action by legislation.

Much can be done by the Government in labor matters merely by giving
publicity to certain conditions. The Bureau of Labor has done excellent
work of this kind in many different directions. I shall shortly lay
before you in a special message the full report of the investigation of
the Bureau of Labor into the Colorado mining strike, as this was a
strike in which certain very evil forces, which are more or less at
work everywhere under the conditions of modern industrialism, became
startlingly prominent. It is greatly to be wished that the Department
of Commerce and Labor, through the Labor Bureau, should compile and
arrange for the Congress a list of the labor laws of the various
States, and should be given the means to investigate and report to the
Congress upon the labor conditions in the manufacturing and mining
regions throughout the country, both as to wages, as to hours of labor,
as to the labor of women and children, and as to the effect in the
various labor centers of immigration from abroad. In this investigation
especial attention should be paid to the conditions of child labor and
child-labor legislation in the several States. Such an investigation
must necessarily take into account many of the problems with which this
question of child labor is connected. These problems can be actually
met, in most cases, only by the States themselves; but the lack of
proper legislation in one State in such a matter as child labor often
renders it excessively difficult to establish protective restriction
upon the work in another State having the same industries, so that the
worst tends to drag down the better. For this reason, it would be well
for the Nation at least to endeavor to secure comprehensive information
as to the conditions of labor of children in the different States. Such
investigation and publication by the National Government would tend
toward the securing of approximately uniform legislation of the proper
character among the several States.

When we come to deal with great corporations the need for the
Government to act directly is far greater than in the case of labor,
because great corporations can become such only by engaging in
interstate commerce, and interstate commerce is peculiarly the field of
the General Government. It is an absurdity to expect to eliminate the
abuses in great corporations by State action. It is difficult to be
patient with an argument that such matters should be left to the States
because more than one State pursues the policy of creating on easy
terms corporations which are never operated within that State at all,
but in other States whose laws they ignore. The National Government
alone can deal adequately with these great corporations. To try to deal
with them in an intemperate, destructive, or demagogic spirit would, in
all probability, mean that nothing whatever would be accomplished, and,
with absolute certainty, that if anything were accomplished it would be
of a harmful nature. The American people need to continue to show the
very qualities that they have shown--that is, moderation, good sense,
the earnest desire to avoid doing any damage, and yet the quiet
determination to proceed, step by step, without halt and without hurry,
in eliminating or at least in minimizing whatever of mischief or evil
there is to interstate commerce in the conduct of great corporations.
They are acting in no spirit of hostility to wealth, either individual
or corporate. They are not against the rich man any more than against
the poor man. On the contrary, they are friendly alike toward rich man
and toward poor man, provided only that each acts in a spirit of
justice and decency toward his fellows. Great corporations are
necessary, and only men of great and singular mental power can manage
such corporations successfully, and such men must have great rewards.
But these corporations should be managed with due regard to the
interest of the public as a whole. Where this can be done under the
present laws it must be done. Where these laws come short others should
be enacted to supplement them.

Yet we must never forget the determining factor in every kind of work,
of head or hand, must be the man's own good sense, courage, and
kindliness. More important than any legislation is the gradual growth
of a feeling of responsibility and forbearance among capitalists, and
wage-workers alike; a feeling of respect on the part of each man for
the rights of others; a feeling of broad community of interest, not
merely of capitalists among themselves, and of wage-workers among
themselves, but of capitalists and wage-workers in their relations to
each other, and of both in their relations to their fellows who with
them make up the body politic. There are many captains of industry,
many labor leaders, who realize this. A recent speech by the president
of one of our great railroad systems to the employees of that system
contains sound common sense. It rims in part as follows:

"It is my belief we can better serve each other, better understand the
man as well as his business, when meeting face to face, exchanging
views, and realizing from personal contact we serve but one interest,
that of our mutual prosperity.

"Serious misunderstandings can not occur where personal good will
exists and opportunity for personal explanation is present.

"In my early business life I had experience with men of affairs of a
character to make me desire to avoid creating a like feeling of
resentment to myself and the interests in my charge, should fortune
ever place me in authority, and I am solicitous of a measure of
confidence on the part of the public and our employees that I shall
hope may be warranted by the fairness and good fellowship I intend
shall prevail in our relationship.

"But do not feel I am disposed to grant unreasonable requests, spend
the money of our company unnecessarily or without value received, nor
expect the days of mistakes are disappearing, or that cause for
complaint will not continually occur; simply to correct such abuses as
may be discovered, to better conditions as fast as reasonably may be
expected, constantly striving, with varying success, for that
improvement we all desire, to convince you there is a force at work in
the right direction, all the time making progress--is the disposition
with which I have come among you, asking your good will and
encouragement.

"The day has gone by when a corporation can be handled successfully in
defiance of the public will, even though that will be unreasonable and
wrong. A public may be led, but not driven, and I prefer to go with it
and shape or modify, in a measure, its opinion, rather than be swept
from my bearings, with loss to myself and the interests in my charge.

"Violent prejudice exists towards corporate activity and capital today,
much of it founded in reason, more in apprehension, and a large measure
is due to the personal traits of arbitrary, unreasonable, incompetent,
and offensive men in positions of authority. The accomplishment of
results by indirection, the endeavor to thwart the intention, if not
the expressed letter of the law (the will of the people), a disregard
of the rights of others, a disposition to withhold what is due, to
force by main strength or inactivity a result not justified, depending
upon the weakness of the claimant and his indisposition to become
involved in litigation, has created a sentiment harmful in the extreme
and a disposition to consider anything fair that gives gain to the
individual at the expense of the company.

"If corporations are to continue to do the world's work, as they are
best fitted to, these qualities in their representatives that have
resulted in the present prejudice against them must be relegated to the
background. The corporations must come out into the open and see and be
seen. They must take the public into their confidence and ask for what
they want, and no more, and be prepared to explain satisfactorily what
advantage will accrue to the public if they are given their desires;
for they are permitted to exist not that they may make money solely,
but that they may effectively serve those from whom they derive their
power.

"Publicity, and not secrecy, will win hereafter, and laws be construed
by their intent and not by their letter, otherwise public utilities
will be owned and operated by the public which created them, even
though the service be less efficient and the result less satisfactory
from a financial standpoint."

The Bureau of Corporations has made careful preliminary investigation
of many important corporations. It will make a special report on the
beef industry.

The policy of the Bureau is to accomplish the purposes of its creation
by co-operation, not antagonism; by making constructive legislation,
not destructive prosecution, the immediate object of its inquiries; by
conservative investigation of law and fact, and by refusal to issue
incomplete and hence necessarily inaccurate reports. Its policy being
thus one of open inquiry into, and not attack upon, business, the
Bureau has been able to gain not only the confidence, but, better
still, the cooperation of men engaged in legitimate business.

The Bureau offers to the Congress the means of getting at the cost of
production of our various great staples of commerce.

Of necessity the careful investigation of special corporations will
afford the Commissioner knowledge of certain business facts, the
publication of which might be an improper infringement of private
rights. The method of making public the results of these investigations
affords, under the law, a means for the protection of private rights.
The Congress will have all facts except such as would give to another
corporation information which would injure the legitimate business of a
competitor and destroy the incentive for individual superiority and
thrift.

The Bureau has also made exhaustive examinations into the legal
condition under which corporate business is carried on in the various
States; into all judicial decisions on the subject; and into the
various systems of corporate taxation in use. I call special attention
to the report of the chief of the Bureau; and I earnestly ask that the
Congress carefully consider the report and recommendations of the
Commissioner on this subject.

The business of insurance vitally affects the great mass of the people
of the United States and is national and not local in its application.
It involves a multitude of transactions among the people of the
different States and between American companies and foreign
governments. I urge that the Congress carefully consider whether the
power of the Bureau of Corporations can not constitutionally be
extended to cover interstate transactions in insurance.

Above all else, we must strive to keep the highways of commerce open to
all on equal terms; and to do this it is necessary to put a complete
stop to all rebates. Whether the shipper or the railroad is to blame
makes no difference; the rebate must be stopped, the abuses of the
private car and private terminal-track and side-track systems must be
stopped, and the legislation of the Fifty-eighth Congress which
declares it to be unlawful for any person or corporation to offer,
grant, give, solicit, accept, or receive any rebate, concession, or
discrimination in respect of the transportation of any property in
interstate or foreign commerce whereby such property shall by any
device whatever be transported at a less rate than that named in the
tariffs published by the carrier must be enforced. For some time after
the enactment of the Act to Regulate Commerce it remained a mooted
question whether that act conferred upon the Interstate Commerce
Commission the power, after it had found a challenged rate to be
unreasonable, to declare what thereafter should, prima facie, be the
reasonable maximum rate for the transportation in dispute. The Supreme
Court finally resolved that question in the negative, so that as the
law now stands the Commission simply possess the bare power to denounce
a particular rate as unreasonable. While I am of the opinion that at
present it would be undesirable, if it were not impracticable, finally
to clothe the Commission with general authority to fix railroad rates,
I do believe that, as a fair security to shippers, the Commission
should be vested with the power, where a given rate has been challenged
and after full hearing found to be unreasonable, to decide, subject to
judicial review, what shall be a reasonable rate to take its place; the
ruling of the Commission to take effect immediately, and to obtain
unless and until it is reversed by the court of review. The Government
must in increasing degree supervise and regulate the workings of the
railways engaged in interstate commerce; and such increased supervision
is the only alternative to an increase of the present evils on the one
hand or a still more radical policy on the other. In my judgment the
most important legislative act now needed as regards the regulation of
corporations is this act to confer on the Interstate Commerce
Commission the power to revise rates and regulations, the revised rate
to at once go into effect, and stay in effect unless and until the
court of review reverses it.

Steamship companies engaged in interstate commerce and protected in our
coastwise trade should be held to a strict observance of the interstate
commerce act.

In pursuing the set plan to make the city of Washington an example to
other American municipalities several points should be kept in mind by
the legislators. In the first place, the people of this country should
clearly understand that no amount of industrial prosperity, and above
all no leadership in international industrial competition, can in any
way atone for the sapping of the vitality of those who are usually
spoken of as the working classes. The farmers, the mechanics, the
skilled and unskilled laborers, the small shop keepers, make up the
bulk of the population of any country; and upon their well-being,
generation after generation, the well-being of the country and the race
depends. Rapid development in wealth and industrial leadership is a
good thing, but only if it goes hand in hand with improvement, and not
deterioration, physical and moral. The over-crowding of cities and the
draining of country districts are unhealthy and even dangerous symptoms
in our modern life. We should not permit overcrowding in cities. In
certain European cities it is provided by law that the population of
towns shall not be allowed to exceed a very limited density for a given
area, so that the increase in density must be continually pushed back
into a broad zone around the center of the town, this zone having great
avenues or parks within it. The death-rate statistics show a terrible
increase in mortality, and especially in infant mortality, in
overcrowded tenements. The poorest families in tenement houses live in
one room, and it appears that in these one-room tenements the average
death rate for a number of given cities at home and abroad is about
twice what it is in a two-room tenement, four times what it is in a
three-room tenement, and eight times what it is in a tenement
consisting of four rooms or over. These figures vary somewhat for
different cities, but they approximate in each city those given above;
and in all cases the increase of mortality, and especially of infant
mortality, with the decrease in the number of rooms used by the family
and with the consequent overcrowding is startling. The slum exacts a
heavy total of death from those who dwell therein; and this is the case
not merely in the great crowded slums of high buildings in New York and
Chicago, but in the alley slums of Washington. In Washington people can
not afford to ignore the harm that this causes. No Christian and
civilized community can afford to show a happy-go-lucky lack of concern
for the youth of to-day; for, if so, the community will have to pay a
terrible penalty of financial burden and social degradation in the
to-morrow. There should be severe child-labor and factory-inspection
laws. It is very desirable that married women should not work in
factories. The prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner;
the prime duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife. All
questions of tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when
compared with the tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape
conditions so that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be
fulfilled under reasonably favorable circumstances. If a race does not
have plenty of children, or if the children do not grow up, or if when
they grow up they are unhealthy in body and stunted or vicious in mind,
then that race is decadent, and no heaping up of wealth, no splendor of
momentary material prosperity, can avail in any degree as offsets.  The
Congress has the same power of legislation for the District of Columbia
which the State legislatures have for the various States. The problems
incident to our highly complex modern industrial civilization, with its
manifold and perplexing tendencies both for good and for evil, are far
less sharply accentuated in the city of Washington than in most other
cities. For this very reason it is easier to deal with the various
phases of these problems in Washington, and the District of Columbia
government should be a model for the other municipal governments of the
Nation, in all such matters as supervision of the housing of the poor,
the creation of small parks in the districts inhabited by the poor, in
laws affecting labor, in laws providing for the taking care of the
children, in truant laws, and in providing schools.

In the vital matter of taking care of children, much advantage could be
gained by a careful study of what has been accomplished in such States
as Illinois and Colorado by the juvenile courts. The work of the
juvenile court is really a work of character building. It is now
generally recognized that young boys and young girls who go wrong
should not be treated as criminals, not even necessarily as needing
reformation, but rather as needing to have their characters formed, and
for this end to have them tested and developed by a system of
probation. Much admirable work has been done in many of our
Commonwealths by earnest men and women who have made a special study of
the needs of those classes of children which furnish the greatest
number of juvenile offenders, and therefore the greatest number of
adult offenders; and by their aid, and by profiting by the experiences
of the different States and cities in these matters, it would be easy
to provide a good code for the District of Columbia.

Several considerations suggest the need for a systematic investigation
into and improvement of housing conditions in Washington. The hidden
residential alleys are breeding grounds of vice and disease, and should
be opened into minor streets. For a number of years influential
citizens have joined with the District Commissioners in the vain
endeavor to secure laws permitting the condemnation of insanitary
dwellings. The local death rates, especially from preventable diseases,
are so unduly high as to suggest that the exceptional wholesomeness of
Washington's better sections is offset by bad conditions in her poorer
neighborhoods. A special "Commission on Housing and Health Conditions
in the National Capital" would not only bring about the reformation of
existing evils, but would also formulate an appropriate building code
to protect the city from mammoth brick tenements and other evils which
threaten to develop here as they have in other cities. That the
Nation's Capital should be made a model for other municipalities is an
ideal which appeals to all patriotic citizens everywhere, and such a
special Commission might map out and organize the city's future
development in lines of civic social service, just as Major L'Enfant
and the recent Park Commission planned the arrangement of her streets
and parks.

It is mortifying to remember that Washington has no compulsory school
attendance law and that careful inquiries indicate the habitual absence
from school of some twenty per cent of all children between the ages of
eight and fourteen. It must be evident to all who consider the problems
of neglected child life or the benefits of compulsory education in
other cities that one of the most urgent needs of the National Capital
is a law requiring the school attendance of all children, this law to
be enforced by attendance agents directed by the board of education.

Public play grounds are necessary means for the development of
wholesome citizenship in modern cities. It is important that the work
inaugurated here through voluntary efforts should be taken up and
extended through Congressional appropriation of funds sufficient to
equip and maintain numerous convenient small play grounds upon land
which can be secured without purchase or rental. It is also desirable
that small vacant places be purchased and reserved as small-park play
grounds in densely settled sections of the city which now have no
public open spaces and are destined soon to be built up solidly. All
these needs should be met immediately. To meet them would entail
expenses; but a corresponding saving could be made by stopping the
building of streets and levelling of ground for purposes largely
speculative in outlying parts of the city.

There are certain offenders, whose criminality takes the shape of
brutality and cruelty towards the weak, who need a special type of
punishment. The wife-beater, for example, is inadequately punished by
imprisonment; for imprisonment may often mean nothing to him, while it
may cause hunger and want to the wife and children who have been the
victims of his brutality. Probably some form of corporal punishment
would be the most adequate way of meeting this kind of crime.

The Department of Agriculture has grown into an educational institution
with a faculty of two thousand specialists making research into all the
sciences of production. The Congress appropriates, directly and
indirectly, six millions of dollars annually to carry on this work. It
reaches every State and Territory in the Union and the islands of the
sea lately come under our flag. Co-operation is had with the State
experiment stations, and with many other institutions and individuals.
The world is carefully searched for new varieties of grains, fruits,
grasses, vegetables, trees, and shrubs, suitable to various localities
in our country; and marked benefit to our producers has resulted.

The activities of our age in lines of research have reached the tillers
of the soil and inspired them with ambition to know more of the
principles that govern the forces of nature with which they have to
deal. Nearly half of the people of this country devote their energies
to growing things from the soil. Until a recent date little has been
done to prepare these millions for their life work. In most lines of
human activity college-trained men are the leaders. The farmer had no
opportunity for special training until the Congress made provision for
it forty years ago. During these years progress has been made and
teachers have been prepared. Over five thousand students are in
attendance at our State agricultural colleges. The Federal Government
expends ten millions of dollars annually toward this education and for
research in Washington and in the several States and Territories. The
Department of Agriculture has given facilities for post-graduate work
to five hundred young men during the last seven years, preparing them
for advance lines of work in the Department and in the State
institutions.

The facts concerning meteorology and its relations to plant and animal
life are being systematically inquired into. Temperature and moisture
are controlling factors in all agricultural operations. The seasons of
the cyclones of the Caribbean Sea and their paths are being forecasted
with increasing accuracy. The cold winds that come from the north are
anticipated and their times and intensity told to farmers, gardeners,
and fruiterers in all southern localities.

We sell two hundred and fifty million dollars' worth of animals and
animal products to foreign countries every year, in addition to
supplying our own people more cheaply and abundantly than any other
nation is able to provide for its people. Successful manufacturing
depends primarily on cheap food, which accounts to a considerable
extent for our growth in this direction. The Department of Agriculture,
by careful inspection of meats, guards the health of our people and
gives clean bills of health to deserving exports; it is prepared to
deal promptly with imported diseases of animals, and maintain the
excellence of our flocks and herds in this respect. There should be an
annual census of the live stock of the Nation.

We sell abroad about six hundred million dollars' worth of plants and
their products every year. Strenuous efforts are being made to import
from foreign countries such grains as are suitable to our varying
localities. Seven years ago we bought three-fourths of our rice; by
helping the rice growers on the Gulf coast to secure seeds from the
Orient suited to their conditions, and by giving them adequate
protection, they now supply home demand and export to the islands of
the Caribbean Sea and to other rice-growing countries. Wheat and other
grains have been imported from light-rainfall countries to our lands in
the West and Southwest that have not grown crops because of light
precipitation, resulting in an extensive addition to our cropping area
and our home-making territory that can not be irrigated. Ten million
bushels of first-class macaroni wheat were grown from these
experimental importations last year. Fruits suitable to our soils and
climates are being imported from all the countries of the Old
World--the fig from Turkey, the almond from Spain, the date from
Algeria, the mango from India. We are helping our fruit growers to get
their crops into European markets by studying methods of preservation
through refrigeration, packing, and handling, which have been quite
successful. We are helping our hop growers by importing varieties that
ripen earlier and later than the kinds they have been raising, thereby
lengthening the harvesting season. The cotton crop of the country is
threatened with root rot, the bollworm, and the boll weevil. Our
pathologists will find immune varieties that will resist the root
disease, and the bollworm can be dealt with, but the boll weevil is a
serious menace to the cotton crop. It is a Central American insect that
has become acclimated in Texas and has done great damage. A scientist
of the Department of Agriculture has found the weevil at home in
Guatemala being kept in check by an ant, which has been brought to our
cotton fields for observation. It is hoped that it may serve a good
purpose.

The soils of the country are getting attention from the farmer's
standpoint, and interesting results are following. We have duplicates
of the soils that grow the wrapper tobacco in Sumatra and the filler
tobacco in Cuba. It will be only a question of time when the large
amounts paid to these countries will be paid to our own people. The
reclamation of alkali lands is progressing, to give object lessons to
our people in methods by which worthless lands may be made productive.

The insect friends and enemies of the farmer are getting attention. The
enemy of the San Jose scale was found near the Great Wall of China, and
is now cleaning up all our orchards. The fig-fertilizing insect
imported from Turkey has helped to establish an industry in California
that amounts to from fifty to one hundred tons of dried figs annually,
and is extending over the Pacific coast. A parasitic fly from South
Africa is keeping in subjection the black scale, the worst pest of the
orange and lemon industry in California.

Careful preliminary work is being done towards producing our own silk.
The mulberry is being distributed in large numbers, eggs are being
imported and distributed, improved reels were imported from Europe last
year, and two expert reelers were brought to Washington to reel the
crop of cocoons and teach the art to our own people.

The crop-reporting system of the Department of Agriculture is being
brought closer to accuracy every year. It has two hundred and fifty
thousand reporters selected from people in eight vocations in life. It
has arrangements with most European countries for interchange of
estimates, so that our people may know as nearly as possible with what
they must compete.

During the two and a half years that have elapsed since the passage of
the reclamation act rapid progress has been made in the surveys and
examinations of the opportunities for reclamation in the thirteen
States and three Territories of the arid West. Construction has already
been begun on the largest and most important of the irrigation works,
and plans are being completed for works which will utilize the funds
now available. The operations are being carried on by the Reclamation
Service, a corps of engineers selected through competitive
civil-service examinations. This corps includes experienced consulting
and constructing engineers as well as various experts in mechanical and
legal matters, and is composed largely of men who have spent most of
their lives in practical affairs connected with irrigation. The larger
problems have been solved and it now remains to execute with care,
economy, and thoroughness the work which has been laid out. All
important details are being carefully considered by boards of
consulting engineers, selected for their thorough knowledge and
practical experience. Each project is taken up on the ground by
competent men and viewed from the standpoint of the creation of
prosperous homes, and of promptly refunding to the Treasury the cost of
construction. The reclamation act has been found to be remarkably
complete and effective, and so broad in its provisions that a wide
range of undertakings has been possible under it. At the same time,
economy is guaranteed by the fact that the funds must ultimately be
returned to be used over again.

It is the cardinal principle of the forest-reserve policy of this
Administration that the reserves are for use. Whatever interferes with
the use of their resources is to be avoided by every possible means.
But these resources must be used in such a way as to make them
permanent.

The forest policy of the Government is just now a subject of vivid
public interest throughout the West and to the people of the United
States in general. The forest reserves themselves are of extreme value
to the present as well as to the future welfare of all the western
public-land States. They powerfully affect the use and disposal of the
public lands. They are of special importance because they preserve the
water supply and the supply of timber for domestic purposes, and so
promote settlement under the reclamation act. Indeed, they are
essential to the welfare of every one of the great interests of the
West.

Forest reserves are created for two principal purposes. The first is to
preserve the water supply. This is their most important use. The
principal users of the water thus preserved are irrigation ranchers and
settlers, cities and towns to whom their municipal water supplies are
of the very first importance, users and furnishers of water power, and
the users of water for domestic, manufacturing, mining, and other
purposes. All these are directly dependent upon the forest reserves.

The second reason for which forest reserves are created is to preserve
the timber supply for various classes of wood users. Among the more
important of these are settlers under the reclamation act and other
acts, for whom a cheap and accessible supply of timber for domestic
uses is absolutely necessary; miners and prospectors, who are in
serious danger of losing their timber supply by fire or through export
by lumber companies when timber lands adjacent to their mines pass into
private ownership; lumbermen, transportation companies, builders, and
commercial interests in general.

Although the wisdom of creating forest reserves is nearly everywhere
heartily recognized, yet in a few localities there has been
misunderstanding and complaint. The following statement is therefore
desirable:

The forest reserve policy can be successful only when it has the full
support of the people of the West. It can not safely, and should not in
any case, be imposed upon them against their will. But neither can we
accept the views of those whose only interest in the forest is
temporary; who are anxious to reap what they have not sown and then
move away, leaving desolation behind them. On the contrary, it is
everywhere and always the interest of the permanent settler and the
permanent business man, the man with a stake in the country, which must
be considered and which must decide.

The making of forest reserves within railroad and wagon-road land-grant
limits will hereafter, as for the past three years, be so managed as to
prevent the issue, under the act of June 4, 1897, of base for exchange
or lieu selection (usually called scrip). In all cases where forest
reserves within areas covered by land grants appear to be essential to
the prosperity of settlers, miners, or others, the Government lands
within such proposed forest reserves will, as in the recent past, be
withdrawn from sale or entry pending the completion of such
negotiations with the owners of the land grants as will prevent the
creation of so-called scrip.

It was formerly the custom to make forest reserves without first
getting definite and detailed information as to the character of land
and timber within their boundaries. This method of action often
resulted in badly chosen boundaries and consequent injustice to
settlers and others. Therefore this Administration adopted the present
method of first withdrawing the land from disposal, followed by careful
examination on the ground and the preparation of detailed maps and
descriptions, before any forest reserve is created.

I have repeatedly called attention to the confusion which exists in
Government forest matters because the work is scattered among three
independent organizations. The United States is the only one of the
great nations in which the forest work of the Government is not
concentrated under one department, in consonance with the plainest
dictates of good administration and common sense. The present
arrangement is bad from every point of view. Merely to mention it is to
prove that it should be terminated at once. As I have repeatedly
recommended, all the forest work of the Government should be
concentrated in the Department of Agriculture, where the larger part of
that work is already done, where practically all of the trained
foresters of the Government are employed, where chiefly in Washington
there is comprehensive first-class knowledge of the problems of the
reserves acquired on the ground, where all problems relating to growth
from the soil are already gathered, and where all the sciences
auxiliary to forestry are at hand for prompt and effective
co-operation. These reasons are decisive in themselves, but it should
be added that the great organizations of citizens whose interests are
affected by the forest-reserves, such as the National Live Stock
Association, the National Wool Growers' Association, the American
Mining Congress, the national Irrigation Congress, and the National
Board of Trade, have uniformly, emphatically, and most of them
repeatedly, expressed themselves in favor of placing all Government
forest work in the Department of Agriculture because of the peculiar
adaptation of that Department for it. It is true, also, that the forest
services of nearly all the great nations of the world are under the
respective departments of agriculture, while in but two of the smaller
nations and in one colony are they under the department of the
interior. This is the result of long and varied experience and it
agrees fully with the requirements of good administration in our own
case.

The creation of a forest service in the Department of Agriculture will
have for its important results:

First. A better handling of all forest work; because it will be under a
single head, and because the vast and indispensable experience of the
Department in all matters pertaining to the forest reserves, to
forestry in general, and to other forms of production from the soil,
will be easily and rapidly accessible.

Second. The reserves themselves, being handled from the point of view
of the man in the field, instead of the man in the office, will be more
easily and more widely useful to the people of the West than has been
the case hitherto.

Third. Within a comparatively short time the reserves will become
self-supporting. This is important, because continually and rapidly
increasing appropriations will be necessary for the proper care of this
exceedingly important interest of the Nation, and they can and should
he offset by returns from the National forests. Under similar
circumstances the forest possessions of other great nations form an
important source of revenue to their governments.

Every administrative officer concerned is convinced of the necessity
for the proposed consolidation of forest work in the Department of
Agriculture, and I myself have urged it more than once in former
messages. Again I commend it to the early and favorable consideration
of the Congress. The interests of the Nation at large and of the West
in particular have suffered greatly because of the delay.

I call the attention of the Congress again to the report and
recommendation of the Commission on the Public Lands forwarded by me to
the second session of the present Congress. The Commission has
prosecuted its investigations actively during the past season, and a
second report is now in an advanced stage of preparation.

In connection with the work of the forest reserves I desire again to
urge upon the Congress the importance of authorizing the President to
set aside certain portions of these reserves or other public lands as
game refuges for the preservation of the bison, the wapiti, and other
large beasts once so abundant in our woods and mountains and on our
great plains, and now tending toward extinction. Every support should
be given to the authorities of the Yellowstone Park in their successful
efforts at preserving the large creatures therein; and at very little
expense portions of the public domain in other regions which are wholly
unsuited to agricultural settlement could be similarly utilized. We owe
it to future generations to keep alive the noble and beautiful
creatures which by their presence add such distinctive character to the
American wilderness. The limits of the Yellowstone Park should be
extended southwards. The Canyon of the Colorado should be made a
national park; and the national-park system should include the Yosemite
and as many as possible of the groves of giant trees in California.

The veterans of the Civil War have a claim upon the Nation such as no
other body of our citizens possess. The Pension Bureau has never in its
history been managed in a more satisfactory manner than is now the
case.

The progress of the Indians toward civilization, though not rapid, is
perhaps all that could be hoped for in view of the circumstances.
Within the past year many tribes have shown, in a degree greater than
ever before, an appreciation of the necessity of work. This changed
attitude is in part due to the policy recently pursued of reducing the
amount of subsistence to the Indians, and thus forcing them, through
sheer necessity, to work for a livelihood. The policy, though severe,
is a useful one, but it is to be exercised only with judgment and with
a full understanding of the conditions which exist in each community
for which it is intended. On or near the Indian reservations there is
usually very little demand for labor, and if the Indians are to earn
their living and when work can not be furnished from outside (which is
always preferable), then it must be furnished by the Government.
Practical instruction of this kind would in a few years result in the
forming of habits of regular industry, which would render the Indian a
producer and would effect a great reduction in the cost of his
maintenance.

It is commonly declared that the slow advance of the Indians is due to
the unsatisfactory character of the men appointed to take immediate
charge of them, and to some extent this is true. While the standard of
the employees in the Indian Service shows great improvement over that
of bygone years, and while actual corruption or flagrant dishonesty is
now the rare exception, it is nevertheless the fact that the salaries
paid Indian agents are not large enough to attract the best men to that
field of work. To achieve satisfactory results the official in charge
of an Indian tribe should possess the high qualifications which are
required in the manager of a large business, but only in exceptional
cases is it possible to secure men of such a type for these positions.
Much better service, however, might be obtained from those now holding
the places were it practicable to get out of them the best that is in
them, and this should be done by bringing them constantly into closer
touch with their superior officers. An agent who has been content to
draw his salary, giving in return the least possible equivalent in
effort and service, may, by proper treatment, by suggestion and
encouragement, or persistent urging, be stimulated to greater effort
and induced to take a more active personal interest in his work.

Under existing conditions an Indian agent in the distant West may be
wholly out of touch with the office of the Indian Bureau. He may very
well feel that no one takes a personal interest in him or his efforts.
Certain routine duties in the way of reports and accounts are required
of him, but there is no one with whom he may intelligently consult on
matters vital to his work, except after long delay. Such a man would be
greatly encouraged and aided by personal contact with some one whose
interest in Indian affairs and whose authority in the Indian Bureau
were greater than his own, and such contact would be certain to arouse
and constantly increase the interest he takes in his work.

The distance which separates the agents--the workers in the field--from
the Indian Office in Washington is a chief obstacle to Indian progress.
Whatever shall more closely unite these two branches of the Indian
Service, and shall enable them to co-operate more heartily and more
effectively, will be for the increased efficiency of the work and the
betterment of the race for whose improvement the Indian Bureau was
established. The appointment of a field assistant to the Commissioner
of Indian Affairs would be certain to insure this good end. Such an
official, if possessed of the requisite energy and deep interest in the
work, would be a most efficient factor in bringing into closer
relationship and a more direct union of effort the Bureau in Washington
and its agents in the field; and with the co-operation of its branches
thus secured the Indian Bureau would, in measure fuller than ever
before, lift up the savage toward that self-help and self-reliance
which constitute the man.

In 1907 there will be held at Hampton Roads the tricentennial
celebration of the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, with which the
history of what has now become the United States really begins. I
commend this to your favorable consideration. It is an event of prime
historic significance, in which all the people of the United States
should feel, and should show, great and general interest.

In the Post-Office Department the service has increased in efficiency,
and conditions as to revenue and expenditure continue satisfactory. The
increase of revenue during the year was $9,358,181.10, or 6.9 per cent,
the total receipts amounting to $143,382,624.34. The expenditures were
$152,362,116.70, an increase of about 9 per cent over the previous
year, being thus $8,979,492.36 in excess of the current revenue.
Included in these expenditures was a total appropriation of
$152,956,637.35 for the continuation and extension of the rural
free-delivery service, which was an increase of $4,902,237.35 over the
amount expended for this purpose in the preceding fiscal year. Large as
this expenditure has been the beneficent results attained in extending
the free distribution of mails to the residents of rural districts have
justified the wisdom of the outlay. Statistics brought down to the 1st
of October, 1904, show that on that date there were 27,138 rural routes
established, serving approximately 12,000,000 of people in rural
districts remote from post-offices, and that there were pending at that
time 3,859 petitions for the establishment of new rural routes.
Unquestionably some part of the general increase in receipts is due to
the increased postal facilities which the rural service has afforded.
The revenues have also been aided greatly by amendments in the
classification of mail matter, and the curtailment of abuses of the
second-class mailing privilege. The average increase in the volume of
mail matter for the period beginning with 1902 and ending June, 1905
(that portion for 1905 being estimated), is 40.47 per cent, as compared
with 25.46 per cent for the period immediately preceding, and 15.92 for
the four-year period immediately preceding that.

Our consular system needs improvement. Salaries should be substituted
for fees, and the proper classification, grading, and transfer of
consular officers should be provided. I am not prepared to say that a
competitive system of examinations for appointment would work well; but
by law it should be provided that consuls should be familiar, according
to places for which they apply, with the French, German, or Spanish
languages, and should possess acquaintance with the resources of the
United States.

The collection of objects of art contemplated in section 5586 of the
Revised Statutes should be designated and established as a National
Gallery of Art; and the Smithsonian Institution should be authorized to
accept any additions to said collection that may be received by gift,
bequest, or devise.

It is desirable to enact a proper National quarantine law. It is most
undesirable that a State should on its own initiative enforce
quarantine regulations which are in effect a restriction upon
interstate and international commerce. The question should properly be
assumed by the Government alone. The Surgeon-General of the National
Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service has repeatedly and
convincingly set forth the need for such legislation.

I call your attention to the great extravagance in printing and binding
Government publications, and especially to the fact that altogether too
many of these publications are printed. There is a constant tendency to
increase their number and their volume. It is an understatement to say
that no appreciable harm would be caused by, and substantial benefit
would accrue from, decreasing the amount of printing now done by at
least one-half. Probably the great majority of the Government reports
and the like now printed are never read at all, and furthermore the
printing of much of the material contained in many of the remaining
ones serves no useful purpose whatever.

The attention of the Congress should be especially given to the
currency question, and that the standing committees on the matter in
the two Houses charged with the duty, take up the matter of our
currency and see whether it is not possible to secure an agreement in
the business world for bettering the system; the committees should
consider the question of the retirement of the greenbacks and the
problem of securing in our currency such elasticity as is consistent
with safety. Every silver dollar should be made by law redeemable in
gold at the option of the holder.

I especially commend to your immediate attention the encouragement of
our merchant marine by appropriate legislation.

The growing importance of the Orient as a field for American exports
drew from my predecessor, President McKinley, an urgent request for its
special consideration by the Congress. In his message of 1898 he
stated:

"In this relation, as showing the peculiar volume and value of our
trade with China and the peculiarly favorable conditions which exist
for their expansion in the normal course of trade, I refer to the
communication addressed to the Speaker of the House of Representatives
by the Secretary of the Treasury on the 14th of last June, with its
accompanying letter of the Secretary of State, recommending an
appropriation for a commission to study the industrial and commercial
conditions in the Chinese Empire and to report as to the opportunities
for and the obstacles to the enlargement of markets in China for the
raw products and manufactures of the United States. Action was not
taken thereon during the last session. I cordially urge that the
recommendation receive at your hands the consideration which its
importance and timeliness merit."

In his annual message of 1889 he again called attention to this
recommendation, quoting it, and stated further:

"I now renew this recommendation, as the importance of the subject has
steadily grown since it was first submitted to you, and no time should
be lost in studying for ourselves the resources of this great field for
American trade and enterprise."

The importance of securing proper information and data with a view to
the enlargement of our trade with Asia is undiminished. Our consular
representatives in China have strongly urged a place for permanent
display of American products in some prominent trade center of that
Empire, under Government control and management, as an effective means
of advancing our export trade therein. I call the attention of the
Congress to the desirability of carrying out these suggestions.

In dealing with the questions of immigration and naturalization it is
indispensable to keep certain facts ever before the minds of those who
share in enacting the laws. First and foremost, let us remember that
the question of being a good American has nothing whatever to do with a
man's birthplace any more than it has to do with his creed. In every
generation from the time this Government was founded men of foreign
birth have stood in the very foremost rank of good citizenship, and
that not merely in one but in every field of American activity; while
to try to draw a distinction between the man whose parents came to this
country and the man whose ancestors came to it several generations back
is a mere absurdity. Good Americanism is a matter of heart, of
conscience, of lofty aspiration, of sound common sense, but not of
birthplace or of creed. The medal of honor, the highest prize to be won
by those who serve in the Army and the Navy of the United States
decorates men born here, and it also decorates men born in Great
Britain and Ireland, in Germany, in Scandinavia, in France, and
doubtless in other countries also. In the field of statesmanship, in
the field of business, in the field of philanthropic endeavor, it is
equally true that among the men of whom we are most proud as Americans
no distinction whatever can be drawn between those who themselves or
whose parents came over in sailing ship or steamer from across the
water and those whose ancestors stepped ashore into the wooded
wilderness at Plymouth or at the mouth of the Hudson, the Delaware, or
the James nearly three centuries ago. No fellow-citizen of ours is
entitled to any peculiar regard because of the way in which he worships
his Maker, or because of the birthplace of himself or his parents, nor
should he be in any way discriminated against therefor. Each must stand
on his worth as a man and each is entitled to be judged solely thereby.

There is no danger of having too many immigrants of the right kind. It
makes no difference from what country they come. If they are sound in
body and in mind, and, above all, if they are of good character, so
that we can rest assured that their children and grandchildren will be
worthy fellow-citizens of our children and grandchildren, then we
should welcome them with cordial hospitality.

But the citizenship of this country should not be debased. It is vital
that we should keep high the standard of well-being among our
wage-workers, and therefore we should not admit masses of men whose
standards of living and whose personal customs and habits are such that
they tend to lower the level of the American wage-worker; and above all
we should not admit any man of an unworthy type, any man concerning
whom we can say that he will himself be a bad citizen, or that his
children and grandchildren will detract from instead of adding to the
sum of the good citizenship of the country. Similarly we should take
the greatest care about naturalization. Fraudulent naturalization, the
naturalization of improper persons, is a curse to our Government; and
it is the affair of every honest voter, wherever born, to see that no
fraudulent voting is allowed, that no fraud in connection with
naturalization is permitted.

In the past year the cases of false, fraudulent, and improper
naturalization of aliens coming to the attention of the executive
branches of the Government have increased to an alarming degree.
Extensive sales of forged certificates of naturalization have been
discovered, as well as many cases of naturalization secured by perjury
and fraud; and in addition, instances have accumulated showing that
many courts issue certificates of naturalization carelessly and upon
insufficient evidence.

Under the Constitution it is in the power of the Congress "to establish
a uniform rule of naturalization," and numerous laws have from time to
time been enacted for that purpose, which have been supplemented in a
few States by State laws having special application. The Federal
statutes permit naturalization by any court of record in the United
States having common-law jurisdiction and a seal and clerk, except the
police court of the District of Columbia, and nearly all these courts
exercise this important function. It results that where so many courts
of such varying grades have jurisdiction, there is lack of uniformity
in the rules applied in conferring naturalization. Some courts are
strict and others lax. An alien who may secure naturalization in one
place might be denied it in another, and the intent of the
constitutional provision is in fact defeated. Furthermore, the
certificates of naturalization issued by the courts differ widely in
wording and appearance, and when they are brought into use in foreign
countries, are frequently subject to suspicion.

There should be a comprehensive revision of the naturalization laws.
The courts having power to naturalize should be definitely named by
national authority; the testimony upon which naturalization may be
conferred should be definitely prescribed; publication of impending
naturalization applications should be required in advance of their
hearing in court; the form and wording of all certificates issued
should be uniform throughout the country, and the courts should be
required to make returns to the Secretary of State at stated periods of
all naturalizations conferred.

Not only are the laws relating to naturalization now defective, but
those relating to citizenship of the United States ought also to be
made the subject of scientific inquiry with a view to probable further
legislation. By what acts expatriation may be assumed to have been
accomplished, how long an American citizen may reside abroad and
receive the protection of our passport, whether any degree of
protection should be extended to one who has made the declaration of
intention to become a citizen of the United States but has not secured
naturalization, are questions of serious import, involving personal
rights and often producing friction between this Government and foreign
governments. Yet upon these question our laws are silent. I recommend
that an examination be made into the subjects of citizenship,
expatriation, and protection of Americans abroad, with a view to
appropriate legislation.

The power of the Government to protect the integrity of the elections
of its own officials is inherent and has been recognized and affirmed
by repeated declarations of the Supreme Court. There is no enemy of
free government more dangerous and none so insidious as the corruption
of the electorate. No one defends or excuses corruption, and it would
seem to follow that none would oppose vigorous measures to eradicate
it. I recommend the enactment of a law directed against bribery and
corruption in Federal elections. The details of such a law may be
safely left to the wise discretion of the Congress, but it should go as
far as under the Constitution it is possible to go, and should include
severe penalties against him who gives or receives a bribe intended to
influence his act or opinion as an elector; and provisions for the
publication not only of the expenditures for nominations and elections
of all candidates but also of all contributions received and
expenditures made by political committees.

No subject is better worthy the attention of the Congress than that
portion of the report of the Attorney-General dealing with the long
delays and the great obstruction to justice experienced in the cases of
Beavers, Green and Gaynor, and Benson. Were these isolated and special
cases, I should not call your attention to them; but the difficulties
encountered as regards these men who have been indicted for criminal
practices are not exceptional; they are precisely similar in kind to
what occurs again and again in the case of criminals who have
sufficient means to enable them to take advantage of a system of
procedure which has grown up in the Federal courts and which amounts in
effect to making the law easy of enforcement against the man who has no
money, and difficult of enforcement, even to the point of sometimes
securing immunity, as regards the man who has money. In criminal cases
the writ of the United States should run throughout its borders. The
wheels of justice should not be clogged, as they have been clogged in
the cases above mentioned, where it has proved absolutely impossible to
bring the accused to the place appointed by the Constitution for his
trial. Of recent years there has been grave and increasing complaint of
the difficulty of bringing to justice those criminals whose
criminality, instead of being against one person in the Republic, is
against all persons in the Republic, because it is against the Republic
itself. Under any circumstance and from the very nature of the case it
is often exceedingly difficult to secure proper punishment of those who
have been guilty of wrongdoing against the Government. By the time the
offender can be brought into court the popular wrath against him has
generally subsided; and there is in most instances very slight danger
indeed of any prejudice existing in the minds of the jury against him.
At present the interests of the innocent man are amply safeguarded; but
the interests of the Government, that is, the interests of honest
administration, that is the interests of the people, are not recognized
as they should be. No subject better warrants the attention of the
Congress. Indeed, no subject better warrants the attention of the bench
and the bar throughout the United States.

Alaska, like all our Territorial acquisitions, has proved resourceful
beyond the expectations of those who made the purchase. It has become
the home of many hardy, industrious, and thrifty American citizens.
Towns of a permanent character have been built. The extent of its
wealth in minerals, timber, fisheries, and agriculture, while great, is
probably not comprehended yet in any just measure by our people. We do
know, however, that from a very small beginning its products have grown
until they are a steady and material contribution to the wealth of the
nation. Owing to the immensity of Alaska and its location in the far
north, it is a difficult matter to provide many things essential to its
growth and to the happiness and comfort of its people by private
enterprise alone. It should, therefore, receive reasonable aid from the
Government. The Government has already done excellent work for Alaska
in laying cables and building telegraph lines. This work has been done
in the most economical and efficient way by the Signal Corps of the
Army.

In some respects it has outgrown its present laws, while in others
those laws have been found to be inadequate. In order to obtain
information upon which I could rely I caused an official of the
Department of Justice, in whose judgment I have confidence, to visit
Alaska during the past summer for the purpose of ascertaining how
government is administered there and what legislation is actually
needed at present. A statement of the conditions found to exist,
together with some recommendations and the reasons therefor, in which I
strongly concur, will be found in the annual report of the
Attorney-General. In some instances I feel that the legislation
suggested is so imperatively needed that I am moved briefly to
emphasize the Attorney-General's proposals.

Under the Code of Alaska as it now stands many purely administrative
powers and duties, including by far the most important, devolve upon
the district judges or upon the clerks of the district court acting
under the direction of the judges, while the governor, upon whom these
powers and duties should logically fall, has nothing specific to do
except to make annual reports, issue Thanksgiving Day proclamations,
and appoint Indian policemen and notaries public. I believe it
essential to good government in Alaska, and therefore recommend, that
the Congress divest the district judges and the clerks of their courts
of the administrative or executive functions that they now exercise and
cast them upon the governor. This would not be an innovation; it would
simply conform the government of Alaska to fundamental principles,
making the governorship a real instead of a merely nominal office, and
leaving the judges free to give their entire attention to their
judicial duties and at the same time removing them from a great deal of
the strife that now embarrasses the judicial office in Alaska.

I also recommend that the salaries of the district judges and district
attorneys in Alaska be increased so as to make them equal to those
received by corresponding officers in the United States after deducting
the difference in the cost of living; that the district attorneys
should be prohibited from engaging in private practice; that United
States commissioners be appointed by the governor of the Territory
instead of by the district judges, and that a fixed salary be provided
for them to take the place of the discredited "fee system," which
should be abolished in all offices; that a mounted constabulary be
created to police the territory outside the limits of incorporated
towns--a vast section now wholly without police protection; and that
some provision be made to at least lessen the oppressive delays and
costs that now attend the prosecution of appeals from the district
court of Alaska. There should be a division of the existing judicial
districts, and an increase in the number of judges.

Alaska should have a Delegate in the Congress. Where possible, the
Congress should aid in the construction of needed wagon roads.
Additional light-houses should be provided. In my judgment, it is
especially important to aid in such manner as seems just and feasible
in the construction of a trunk line of railway to connect the Gulf of
Alaska with the Yukon River through American territory. This would be
most beneficial to the development of the resources of the Territory,
and to the comfort and welfare of its people.

Salmon hatcheries should be established in many different streams, so
as to secure the preservation of this valuable food fish. Salmon
fisheries and canneries should be prohibited on certain of the rivers
where the mass of those Indians dwell who live almost exclusively on
fish.

The Alaskan natives are kindly, intelligent, anxious to learn, and
willing to work. Those who have come under the influence of
civilization, even for a limited period, have proved their capability
of becoming self-supporting, self-respecting citizens, and ask only for
the just enforcement of law and intelligent instruction and
supervision. Others, living in more remote regions, primitive, simple
hunters and fisher folk, who know only the life of the woods and the
waters, are daily being confronted with twentieth-century civilization
with all of its complexities. Their country is being overrun by
strangers, the game slaughtered and driven away, the streams depleted
of fish, and hitherto unknown and fatal diseases brought to them, all
of which combine to produce a state of abject poverty and want which
must result in their extinction. Action in their interest is demanded
by every consideration of justice and humanity.

The needs of these people are:

The abolition of the present fee system, whereby the native is
degraded, imposed upon, and taught the injustice of law.

The establishment of hospitals at central points, so that contagious
diseases that are brought to them continually by incoming whites may be
localized and not allowed to become epidemic, to spread death and
destitution over great areas.

The development of the educational system in the form of practical
training in such industries as will assure the Indians self-support
under the changed conditions in which they will have to live.

The duties of the office of the governor should be extended to include
the supervision of Indian affairs, with necessary assistants in
different districts. He should be provided with the means and the power
to protect and advise the native people, to furnish medical treatment
in time of epidemics, and to extend material relief in periods of
famine and extreme destitution.

The Alaskan natives should be given the right to acquire, hold, and
dispose of property upon the same conditions as given other
inhabitants; and the privilege of citizenship should be given to such
as may be able to meet certain definite requirements. In Hawaii
Congress should give the governor power to remove all the officials
appointed under him. The harbor of Honolulu should be dredged. The
Marine-Hospital Service should be empowered to study leprosy in the
islands. I ask special consideration for the report and recommendation
of the governor of Porto Rico.

In treating of our foreign policy and of the attitude that this great
Nation should assume in the world at large, it is absolutely necessary
to consider the Army and the Navy, and the Congress, through which the
thought of the Nation finds its expression, should keep ever vividly in
mind the fundamental fact that it is impossible to treat our foreign
policy, whether this policy takes shape in the effort to secure justice
for others or justice for ourselves, save as conditioned upon the
attitude we are willing to take toward our Army, and especially toward
our Navy. It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as
for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its
purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by
potential force, and then to refuse to provide this force. If there is
no intention of providing and of keeping the force necessary to back up
a strong attitude, then it is far better not to assume such an
attitude.

The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be
to strive to bring ever nearer the day when there shall prevail
throughout the world the peace of justice. There are kinds of peace
which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive
as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness
and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or
shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by
false teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that
was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from
their own minds their shortcomings, their ignoble motives, by calling
them love of peace. The peace of tyrannous terror, the peace of craven
weakness, the peace of injustice, all these should be shunned as we
shun unrighteous war. The goal to set before us as a nation, the goal
which should be set before all mankind, is the attainment of the peace
of justice, of the peace which comes when each nation is not merely
safe-guarded in its own rights, but scrupulously recognizes and
performs its duty toward others. Generally peace tells for
righteousness; but if there is conflict between the two, then our
fealty is due-first to the cause of righteousness. Unrighteous wars are
common, and unrighteous peace is rare; but both should be shunned. The
right of freedom and the responsibility for the exercise of that right
can not be divorced. One of our great poets has well and finely said
that freedom is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards.
Neither does it tarry long in the hands of those too slothful, too
dishonest, or too unintelligent to exercise it. The eternal vigilance
which is the price of liberty must be exercised, sometimes to guard
against outside foes; although of course far more often to guard
against our own selfish or thoughtless shortcomings.

If these self-evident truths are kept before us, and only if they are
so kept before us, we shall have a clear idea of what our foreign
policy in its larger aspects should be. It is our duty to remember that
a nation has no more right to do injustice to another nation, strong or
weak, than an individual has to do injustice to another individual;
that the same moral law applies in one case as in the other. But we
must also remember that it is as much the duty of the Nation to guard
its own rights and its own interests as it is the duty of the
individual so to do. Within the Nation the individual has now delegated
this right to the State, that is, to the representative of all the
individuals, and it is a maxim of the law that for every wrong there is
a remedy. But in international law we have not advanced by any means as
far as we have advanced in municipal law. There is as yet no judicial
way of enforcing a right in international law. When one nation wrongs
another or wrongs many others, there is no tribunal before which the
wrongdoer can be brought. Either it is necessary supinely to acquiesce
in the wrong, and thus put a premium upon brutality and aggression, or
else it is necessary for the aggrieved nation valiantly to stand up for
its rights. Until some method is devised by which there shall be a
degree of international control over offending nations, it would be a
wicked thing for the most civilized powers, for those with most sense
of international obligations and with keenest and most generous
appreciation of the difference between right and wrong, to disarm. If
the great civilized nations of the present day should completely
disarm, the result would mean an immediate recrudescence of barbarism
in one form or another. Under any circumstances a sufficient armament
would have to be kept up to serve the purposes of international police;
and until international cohesion and the sense of international duties
and rights are far more advanced than at present, a nation desirous
both of securing respect for itself and of doing good to others must
have a force adequate for the work which it feels is allotted to it as
its part of the general world duty. Therefore it follows that a
self-respecting, just, and far-seeing nation should on the one hand
endeavor by every means to aid in the development of the various
movements which tend to provide substitutes for war, which tend to
render nations in their actions toward one another, and indeed toward
their own peoples, more responsive to the general sentiment of humane
and civilized mankind; and on the other hand that it should keep
prepared, while scrupulously avoiding wrongdoing itself, to repel any
wrong, and in exceptional cases to take action which in a more advanced
stage of international relations would come under the head of the
exercise of the international police. A great free people owes it to
itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the
powers of evil.

We are in every way endeavoring to help on, with cordial good will,
every movement which will tend to bring us into more friendly relations
with the rest of mankind. In pursuance of this policy I shall shortly
lay before the Senate treaties of arbitration with all powers which are
willing to enter into these treaties with us. It is not possible at
this period of the world's development to agree to arbitrate all
matters, but there are many matters of possible difference between us
and other nations which can be thus arbitrated. Furthermore, at the
request of the Interparliamentary Union, an eminent body composed of
practical statesmen from all countries, I have asked the Powers to join
with this Government in a second Hague conference, at which it is hoped
that the work already so happily begun at The Hague may be carried some
steps further toward completion. This carries out the desire expressed
by the first Hague conference itself.

It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or
entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western
Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country
desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and
prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count
upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act
with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters,
if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no
interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an
impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized
society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention
by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence
of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United
States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or
impotence, to the exercise of an international police power. If every
country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in stable
and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt amendment Cuba
has shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the
republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all
question of interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at
an end. Our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in
reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within their
borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to
come to them. While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized
society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a
spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them
only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their
inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had
violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign
aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It
is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or
anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence,
must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be
separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.

In asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in taking such steps as we have taken
in regard to Cuba, Venezuela, and Panama, and in endeavoring to
circumscribe the theater of war in the Far East, and to secure the open
door in China, we have acted in our own interest as well as in the
interest of humanity at large. There are, however, cases in which,
while our own interests are not greatly involved, strong appeal is made
to our sympathies. Ordinarily it is very much wiser and more useful for
us to concern ourselves with striving for our own moral and material
betterment here at home than to concern ourselves with trying to better
the condition of things in other nations. We have plenty of sins of our
own to war against, and under ordinary circumstances we can do more for
the general uplifting of humanity by striving with heart and soul to
put a stop to civic corruption, to brutal lawlessness and violent race
prejudices here at home than by passing resolutions about wrongdoing
elsewhere. Nevertheless there are occasional crimes committed on so
vast a scale and of such peculiar horror as to make us doubt whether it
is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our disapproval
of the deed and our sympathy with those who have suffered by it. The
cases must be extreme in which such a course is justifiable. There must
be no effort made to remove the mote from our brother's eye if we
refuse to remove the beam from our own. But in extreme cases action may
be justifiable and proper. What form the action shall take must depend
upon the circumstances of the case; that is, upon the degree of the
atrocity and upon our power to remedy it. The cases in which we could
interfere by force of arms as we interfered to put a stop to
intolerable conditions in Cuba are necessarily very few. Yet it is not
to be expected that a people like ours, which in spite of certain very
obvious shortcomings, nevertheless as a whole shows by its consistent
practice its belief in the principles of civil and religious liberty
and of orderly freedom, a people among whom even the worst crime, like
the crime of lynching, is never more than sporadic, so that individuals
and not classes are molested in their fundamental rights--it is
inevitable that such a nation should desire eagerly to give expression
to its horror on an occasion like that of the massacre of the Jews in
Kishenef, or when it witnesses such systematic and long-extended
cruelty and oppression as the cruelty and oppression of which the
Armenians have been the victims, and which have won for them the
indignant pity of the civilized world.

Even where it is not possible to secure in other nations the observance
of the principles which we accept as axiomatic, it is necessary for us
firmly to insist upon the rights of our own citizens without regard to
their creed or race; without regard to whether they were born here or
born abroad. It has proved very difficult to secure from Russia the
right for our Jewish fellow-citizens to receive passports and travel
through Russian territory. Such conduct is not only unjust and
irritating toward us, but it is difficult to see its wisdom from
Russia's standpoint. No conceivable good is accomplished by it. If an
American Jew or an American Christian misbehaves himself in Russia he
can at once be driven out; but the ordinary American Jew, like the
ordinary American Christian, would behave just about as he behaves
here, that is, behave as any good citizen ought to behave; and where
this is the case it is a wrong against which we are entitled to protest
to refuse him his passport without regard to his conduct and character,
merely on racial and religious grounds. In Turkey our difficulties
arise less from the way in which our citizens are sometimes treated
than from the indignation inevitably excited in seeing such fearful
misrule as has been witnessed both in Armenia and Macedonia.

The strong arm of the Government in enforcing respect for its just
rights in international matters is the Navy of the United States. I
most earnestly recommend that there be no halt in the work of
upbuilding the American Navy. There is no more patriotic duty before us
a people than to keep the Navy adequate to the needs of this country's
position. We have undertaken to build the Isthmian Canal. We have
undertaken to secure for ourselves our just share in the trade of the
Orient. We have undertaken to protect our citizens from proper
treatment in foreign lands. We continue steadily to insist on the
application of the Monroe Doctrine to the Western Hemisphere. Unless
our attitude in these and all similar matters is to be a mere boastful
sham we can not afford to abandon our naval programme. Our voice is now
potent for peace, and is so potent because we are not afraid of war.
But our protestations upon behalf of peace would neither receive nor
deserve the slightest attention if we were impotent to make them good.

The war which now unfortunately rages in the far East has emphasized in
striking fashion the new possibilities of naval warfare. The lessons
taught are both strategic and tactical, and are political as well as
military. The experiences of the war have shown in conclusive fashion
that while sea-going and sea-keeping torpedo destroyers are
indispensable, and fast lightly armed and armored cruisers very useful,
yet that the main reliance, the main standby, in any navy worthy the
name must be the great battle ships, heavily armored and heavily
gunned. Not a Russian or Japanese battle ship has been sunk by a
torpedo boat, or by gunfire, while among the less protected ships,
cruiser after cruiser has been destroyed whenever the hostile squadrons
have gotten within range of one another's weapons. There will always be
a large field of usefulness for cruisers, especially of the more
formidable type. We need to increase the number of torpedo-boat
destroyers, paying less heed to their having a knot or two extra speed
than to their capacity to keep the seas for weeks, and, if necessary,
for months at a time. It is wise to build submarine torpedo boats, as
under certain circumstances they might be very useful. But most of all
we need to continue building our fleet of battle ships, or ships so
powerfully armed that they can inflict the maximum of damage upon our
opponents, and so well protected that they can suffer a severe
hammering in return without fatal impairment of their ability to fight
and maneuver. Of course ample means must be provided for enabling the
personnel of the Navy to be brought to the highest point of efficiency.
Our great fighting ships and torpedo boats must be ceaselessly trained
and maneuvered in squadrons. The officers and men can only learn their
trade thoroughly by ceaseless practice on the high seas. In the event
of war it would be far better to have no ships at all than to have
ships of a poor and ineffective type, or ships which, however good,
were yet manned by untrained and unskillful crews. The best officers
and men in a poor ship could do nothing against fairly good opponents;
and on the other hand a modern war ship is useless unless the officers
and men aboard her have become adepts in their duties. The marksmanship
in our Navy has improved in an extraordinary degree during the last
three years, and on the whole the types of our battleships are
improving; but much remains to be done. Sooner or later we shall have
to provide for some method by which there will be promotions for merit
as well as for seniority, or else retirement all those who after a
certain age have not advanced beyond a certain grade; while no effort
must be spared to make the service attractive to the enlisted men in
order that they may be kept as long as possible in it. Reservation
public schools should be provided wherever there are navy-yards.

Within the last three years the United States has set an example in
disarmament where disarmament was proper. By law our Army is fixed at a
maximum of one hundred thousand and a minimum of sixty thousand men.
When there was insurrection in the Philippines we kept the Army at the
maximum. Peace came in the Philippines, and now our Army has been
reduced to the minimum at which it is possible to keep it with due
regard to its efficiency. The guns now mounted require twenty-eight
thousand men, if the coast fortifications are to be adequately manned.
Relatively to the Nation, it is not now so large as the police force of
New York or Chicago relatively to the population of either city. We
need more officers; there are not enough to perform the regular army
work. It is very important that the officers of the Army should be
accustomed to handle their men in masses, as it is also important that
the National Guard of the several States should be accustomed to actual
field maneuvering, especially in connection with the regulars. For this
reason we are to be congratulated upon the success of the field
maneuvers at Manassas last fall, maneuvers in which a larger number of
Regulars and National Guard took part than was ever before assembled
together in time of peace. No other civilized nation has, relatively to
its population, such a diminutive Army as ours; and while the Army is
so small we are not to be excused if we fail to keep it at a very high
grade of proficiency. It must be incessantly practiced; the standard
for the enlisted men should be kept very high, while at the same time
the service should be made as attractive as possible; and the standard
for the officers should be kept even higher--which, as regards the
upper ranks, can best be done by introducing some system of selection
and rejection into the promotions. We should be able, in the event of
some sudden emergency, to put into the field one first-class army
corps, which should be, as a whole, at least the equal of any body of
troops of like number belonging to any other nation.

Great progress has been made in protecting our coasts by adequate
fortifications with sufficient guns. We should, however, pay much more
heed than at present to the development of an extensive system of
floating mines for use in all our more important harbors. These mines
have been proved to be a most formidable safeguard against hostile
fleets.

I earnestly call the attention of the Congress to the need of amending
the existing law relating to the award of Congressional medals of honor
in the Navy so as to provide that they may be awarded to commissioned
officers and warrant officers as well as to enlisted men. These justly
prized medals are given in the Army alike to the officers and the
enlisted men, and it is most unjust that the commissioned officers and
warrant officers of the Navy should not in this respect have the same
rights as their brethren in the Army and as the enlisted men of the
Navy.

In the Philippine Islands there has been during the past year a
continuation of the steady progress which has obtained ever since our
troops definitely got the upper hand of the insurgents. The Philippine
people, or, to speak more accurately, the many tribes, and even races,
sundered from one another more or less sharply, who go to make up the
people of the Philippine Islands, contain many elements of good, and
some elements which we have a right to hope stand for progress. At
present they are utterly incapable of existing in independence at all
or of building up a civilization of their own. I firmly believe that we
can help them to rise higher and higher in the scale of civilization
and of capacity for self-government, and I most earnestly hope that in
the end they will be able to stand, if not entirely alone, yet in some
such relation to the United States as Cuba now stands. This end is not
yet in sight, and it may be indefinitely postponed if our people are
foolish enough to turn the attention of the Filipinos away from the
problems of achieving moral and material prosperity, of working for a
stable, orderly, and just government, and toward foolish and dangerous
intrigues for a complete independence for which they are as yet totally
unfit.

On the other hand our people must keep steadily before their minds the
fact that the justification for our stay in the Philippines must
ultimately rest chiefly upon the good we are able to do in the islands.
I do not overlook the fact that in the development of our interests in
the Pacific Ocean and along its coasts, the Philippines have played and
will play an important part; and that our interests have been served in
more than one way by the possession of the islands. But our chief
reason for continuing to hold them must be that we ought in good faith
to try to do our share of the world's work, and this particular piece
of work has been imposed upon us by the results of the war with Spain.
The problem presented to us in the Philippine Islands is akin to, but
not exactly like, the problems presented to the other great civilized
powers which have possessions in the Orient. There are points of
resemblance in our work to the work which is being done by the British
in India and Egypt, by the French in Algiers, by the Dutch in Java, by
the Russians in Turkestan, by the Japanese in Formosa; but more
distinctly than any of these powers we are endeavoring to develop the
natives themselves so that they shall take an ever-increasing share in
their own government, and as far as is prudent we are already admitting
their representatives to a governmental equality with our own. There
are commissioners, judges, and governors in the islands who are
Filipinos and who have exactly the same share in the government of the
islands as have their colleagues who are Americans, while in the lower
ranks, of course, the great majority of the public servants are
Filipinos. Within two years we shall be trying the experiment of an
elective lower house in the Philippine legislature. It may be that the
Filipinos will misuse this legislature, and they certainly will misuse
it if they are misled by foolish persons here at home into starting an
agitation for their own independence or into any factious or improper
action. In such case they will do themselves no good and will stop for
the time being all further effort to advance them and give them a
greater share in their own government. But if they act with wisdom and
self-restraint, if they show that they are capable of electing a
legislature which in its turn is capable of taking a sane and efficient
part in the actual work of government, they can rest assured that a
full and increasing measure of recognition will be given them. Above
all they should remember that their prime needs are moral and
industrial, not political. It is a good thing to try the experiment of
giving them a legislature; but it is a far better thing to give them
schools, good roads, railroads which will enable them to get their
products to market, honest courts, an honest and efficient
constabulary, and all that tends to produce order, peace, fair dealing
as between man and man, and habits of intelligent industry and thrift.
If they are safeguarded against oppression, and if their real wants,
material and spiritual, are studied intelligently and in a spirit of
friendly sympathy, much more good will be done them than by any effort
to give them political power, though this effort may in its own proper
time and place be proper enough.

Meanwhile our own people should remember that there is need for the
highest standard of conduct among the Americans sent to the Philippine
Islands, not only among the public servants but among the private
individuals who go to them. It is because I feel this so deeply that in
the administration of these islands I have positively refused to permit
any discrimination whatsoever for political reasons and have insisted
that in choosing the public servants consideration should be paid
solely to the worth of the men chosen and to the needs of the islands.
There is no higher body of men in our public service than we have in
the Philippine Islands under Governor Wright and his associates. So far
as possible these men should be given a free hand, and their
suggestions should receive the hearty backing both of the Executive and
of the Congress. There is need of a vigilant and disinterested support
of our public servants in the Philippines by good citizens here in the
United States. Unfortunately hitherto those of our people here at home
who have specially claimed to be the champions of the Filipinos have in
reality been their worst enemies. This will continue to be the case as
long as they strive to make the Filipinos independent, and stop all
industrial development of the islands by crying out against the laws
which would bring it on the ground that capitalists must not "exploit"
the islands. Such proceedings are not only unwise, but are most harmful
to the Filipinos, who do not need independence at all, but who do need
good laws, good public servants, and the industrial development that
can only come if the investment, of American and foreign capital in the
islands is favored in all legitimate ways.

Every measure taken concerning the islands should be taken primarily
with a view to their advantage. We should certainly give them lower
tariff rates on their exports to the United States; if this is not done
it will be a wrong to extend our shipping laws to them. I earnestly
hope for the immediate enactment into law of the legislation now
pending to encourage American capital to seek investment in the islands
in railroads, in factories, in plantations, and in lumbering and
mining.