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been pawned, and as the worn-out shoes could not be

replaced the children could not go to school. The mother

was ill and barely able to come for the supplies and

medicines. Two years later she invited me to supper one

Sunday evening in the little home which had been com-

pletely restored, and she gave as a reason for the invitation

that she couldn’t bear to have me remember them as they

had been during that one winter, which she insisted had

been unique in her twelve years of married life. She said

that it was as if she had met me, not as I am ordinarily, but

as I should appear misshapen with rheumatism or with a

face distorted by neuralgic pain; that it was not fair to

judge poor people that way. She perhaps unconsciously

illustrated the difference between the relief-station rela-

tion to the poor and the Settlement relation to its neigh-

bors, the latter wishing to know them through all the

varying conditions of life, to stand by when they are in dis-

tress, but by no means to drop intercourse with them when

normal prosperity has returned, enabling the relation to

become more social and free from economic disturbance.

Possibly something of the same effort has to be made

within the Settlement itself to keep its own sense of pro-

portion in regard to the relation of the crowded city quar-

ter to the rest of the country. It was in the spring following

this terrible winter, during a journey to meet lecture

engagements in California, that I found myself amazed at

the large stretches of open country and prosperous towns

through which we passed day by day, whose existence I

had quite forgotten.

In the latter part of the summer of 1895, I served as a

member on a commission appointed by the mayor of

Chicago, to investigate conditions in the country poor-

house, public attention having become centered on it

through one of those distressing stories, which exaggerates

the wrong in a public institution while at the same time it

reveals conditions which need to be rectified. However

necessary publicity is for securing reformed administra-

tion, however useful such exposures may be for political

purposes, the whole is attended by such a waste of the

most precious human emotions, by such a tearing of living

tissue, that it can scarcely be endured. Every time I

entered Hull-House during the days of the investigation, I

would find waiting for me from twenty to thirty people

whose friends and relatives were in the suspected institu-

tion, all in such acute distress of mind that to see them was

to look upon the victims of deliberate torture. In most

cases my visitor would state that it seemed impossible to

put their invalids in any other place, but if these stories

were true, something must be done. Many of the patients

were taken out only to be returned after a few days or

weeks to meet the sullen hostility of their attendants and

with their own attitude changed from confidence to timid-

ity and alarm.

This piteous dependence of the poor upon the good

will of public officials was made clear to us in any early

experience with a peasant woman straight from the fields

of Germany, whom we met during our first six months at

Hull-House. Her four years in America had been spent in

patiently carrying water up and down two flights of stairs,

and in washing the heavy flannel suits of iron foundry

workers. For this her pay had averaged thirty-five cents a

day. Three of her daughters had fallen victims to the vice

of the city. The mother was bewildered and distressed, but

understood nothing. We were able to induce the betrayer

of one daughter to marry her; the second, after a tedious

lawsuit, supported his child; with the third we were able to

do nothing. This woman is now living with her family in a

little house seventeen miles from the city. She has made

two payments on her land and is a lesson to all beholders

as she pastures her cow up and down the railroad tracks

and makes money from her ten acres. She did not need

charity for she had an immense capacity for hard work, but

she sadly needed the service of the state’s attorney office,

enforcing the laws designed for the protection of such girls

as her daughters.

We early found ourselves spending many hours in

efforts to secure support for deserted women, insurance

for bewildered widows, damages for injured operators,

furniture from the clutches of the installment store. The

Settlement is valuable as an information and interpretation

bureau. It constantly acts between the various institutions

of the city and the people for whose benefit these institu-

tions were erected. The hospitals, the county agencies, and

state asylums are often but vague rumors to the people

who need them most. Another function of the Settlement

to its neighborhood resembles that of the big brother

whose mere presence on the playground protects the little

one from bullies.

We early learned to know the children of hard driven

mothers who went our to work all day, sometimes leaving

the little things in the casual care of a neighbor, but often

locking them into their tenement rooms. The first three

crippled children we encountered in the neighborhood

had all been injured while their mothers were at work: one

had fallen out of a third-story window, another had been

burned, and the third had a curved spine due to the fact

that for three years he had been tied all day long to the leg

of the kitchen table, only released at noon by his older

brother who hastily ran in from a neighboring factory to

share his lunch with him. When the hot weather came the

restless children could not brook the confinement of the

stuffy rooms, and, as it was not considered safe to leave the

doors open because of sneak thieves, many of the children

were locked out. During our first summer an increasing

number of these poor little mites would wander into the

cool hallway of Hull-House. We kept them there and fed

1212 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

them at noon, in return for which we were sometimes

offered a hot penny which had been held in a tight little fist

“ever since mother left this morning, to buy something to

eat with.” Out of kindergarten hours our little guests nois-

ily enjoyed the hospitality of our bedrooms under the so-

called care of any resident who volunteered to keep an eye

on them, but later they were moved into a neighboring

apartment under more systematic supervision.

Hull-House was thus committed to a day nursery

which we sustained for sixteen years first in a little cottage

on a side street and then in a building designed for its use

called the Children’s House. It is now carried on by the

United Charities of Chicago in a finely equipped building

on our block, where the immigrant mothers are cared for

as well as the children, and where they are taught the

things which will make life in America more possible. Our

early day nursery brought us into natural relations with the

poorest women of the neighborhood, many of whom were

bearing the burden of dissolute and incompetent husbands

in addition to the support of their children. Some of them

presented an impressive manifestation of that miracle of

affection which outlives abuse, neglect, and crime—the

affection which cannot be plucked from the heart where it

has lived, although it may serve only to torture and tor-

ment. “Has your husband come back?” you inquire of Mrs.

S., whom you have known for eight years as an overworked

woman bringing her three delicate children every morning

to the nursery; she is bent under the double burden of

earning the money which supports them and giving them

the tender care which alone keeps them alive. The oldest

two children have at last gone to work, and Mrs. S. has

allowed herself the luxury of staying at home two days a

week. And now the worthless husband is back again—the

“gentlemanly gambler” type who, through all vicissitudes,

manages to present a white shirtfront and a gold watch to

the world, but who is dissolute, idle, and extravagant. You

dread to think how much his presence will increase the

drain upon the family exchequer, and you know that he

stayed away until he was certain that the children were old

enough to earn money for his luxuries. Mrs. S. does not

pretend to take his return lightly, but she replies in all seri-

ousness and simplicity, “You know my feeling for him has

never changed. You may think me foolish, but I was always

proud of his good looks and educated appearance. I was

lonely and homesick during those eight years when the

children were little and needed so much doctoring, but I

could never bring myself to feel hard toward him, and I

used to pray the good Lord to keep him from harm and

bring him back to us; so, of course, I’m thankful now.” She

passes on with a dignity which gives one a new sense of the

security of affection.

I recall a similar case of a woman who had supported

her three children for five years, during which time her

dissolute husband constantly demanded money for drink

and kept her perpetually worried and intimidated. One

Saturday, before the “blessed Easter,” he came back from

a long debauch, ragged and filthy, but in a state of lachry-

mose repentance. The poor wife received him as a

returned prodigal, believed that his remorse would prove

lasting, and felt sure that if she and the children went to

church with him on Easter Sunday and he could be

induced to take the pledge before the priest, all their trou-

bles would be ended. After hours of vigorous effort and the

expenditure of all her savings, he finally sat on the front

doorstep the morning of Easter Sunday, bathed, shaved,

and arrayed in a fine new suit of clothes. She left him sit-

ting there in the reluctant spring sunshine while she fin-

ished washing and dressing the children. When she finally

opened the front door with the three shining children that

they might all set forth together, the returned prodigal had

disappeared, and was not seen again until midnight, when

he came back in a glorious state of intoxication from the

proceeds of his pawned clothes and clad once more in the

dingiest attire. She took him in without comment, only to

begin again the wretched cycle. There were of course

instances of the criminal husband as well as of they merely

vicious. I recall one woman who, during seven years, never

missed a visiting day at the penitentiary when she might

see her husband, and whose little children in the nursery

proudly reported the messages from father with no notion

that he was in disgrace, so absolutely did they reflect the

gallant spirit of their mother.

While one was filled with admiration for these heroic

women, something was also to be said for some of the hus-

bands, for the sorry men who, for one reason or another,

had failed in the struggle of life. Sometimes this failure

was purely economic and the men were competent to give

the children, whom they were not able to support, the

care and guidance and even education which were of the

highest value. Only a few months ago I met upon the

street one of the early nursery mothers who for five years

had been living in another part of the city, and in response

to my query as to the welfare of her five children, she bit-

terly replied, “All of them except Mary have been arrested

at one time or another, thank you.” In reply to my remark

that I thought her husband had always had such

admirable control over them, she burst out, “That has

been the whole trouble. I got tried taking care of him and

didn’t believe that his laziness was all due to his health, as

he said, so I left him and said that I would support the

children, but not him. From that minute the trouble with

the four boys began. I never knew what they were doing,

and after every sort of a scrape I finally put Jack and the

twins into institutions where I pay for them. Joe has gone

to work at last, but with a disgraceful record behind him.

I tell you I ain’t so sure that because a woman can make

Progressivism 1213

big money that she can be both father and mother to her

children.”

As I walked on, I could but wonder in which particu-

lar we are most stupid—to judge a man’s worth so solely by

his wage-earning capacity that a good wife feels justified in

leaving him, or in holding fast to that wretched delusion

that a woman can both support and nurture her children.

One of the most piteous revelations of the futility of

the latter attempt came to me through the mother of

“Goosie,” as the children for years called a little boy who,

because he was brought to the nursery wrapped up in his

mother’s shawl, always had his hair filled with the down

and small feathers from the feather brush factory where

she worked. One March morning, Goosie’s mother was

hanging out the washing on a shed roof at six o’clock, doing

it thus early before she left for the factory. Five-year-old

Goosie was trotting at her heels handing her clothespins,

when he was suddenly blown off the roof by the high wind

into the alley below. His neck was broken by the fall and as

he lay piteous and limp on a pile of frozen refuse, his

mother cheerily called him to “climb up again,” so confi-

dent do overworked mothers become that their children

cannot get hurt. After the funeral, as the poor mother sat

in the nursery postponing the moment when she must go

back to her empty rooms, I asked her, in a futile effort to

be of comfort, if there was anything more we could do for

her. The overworked, sorrow-stricken woman looked up

and replied, “If you could give me my wages for to- mor-

row, I would not go to work in the factory at all. I would

like to stay at home all day and hold the baby. Goosie was

always asking me to take him and I never had any time.”

This statement revealed the condition of many nursery

mothers who are obliged to forego the joys and solaces

which belong to even the most poverty-stricken. The long

hours of factory labor necessary for earning the support of

a child leave no time for the tender care and caressing

which may enrich the life of the most piteous baby.

With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture

and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the moth-

ers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser

work of the world! It is curiously inconsistent that with the

emphasis which this generation has placed upon the

mother and upon the prolongation of infancy, we constantly

allow the waste of this most precious material. I cannot

recall without indignation a recent experience. I was

detained late one evening in an office building by a pro-

longed committee meeting of the Board of Education. As I

came out at eleven o’clock, I met in the corridor of the

fourteenth floor a woman whom I knew, on her knees

scrubbing the marble tiling. As she straightened up to greet

me, she seemed so wet from her feet up to her chin, that I

hastily inquired the cause. Her reply was that she left home

at five o’clock every night and had no opportunity for six

hours to nurse her baby. Her mother’s milk mingled with

the very water with which she scrubbed the floors until she

should return at midnight, heated and exhausted, to feed

her screaming child with what remained within her breasts.

These are only a few of the problems connected with

the lives of the poorest people with whom the residents in

a Settlement are constantly brought in contact.

I cannot close this chapter without a reference to that

gallant company of men and women among whom my

acquaintance is so large, who are fairly indifferent to star-

vation itself because of their preoccupation with higher

ends. Among them are visionaries and enthusiasts, unsuc-

cessful artists, writers, and reformers. For many years at

Hull-House, we knew a well-bred German woman who

was completely absorbed in the experiment of expressing

musical phrases and melodies by means of colors. Because

she was small and deformed, she stowed herself into her

trunk every night, where she slept on a canvas stretched

hammock-wise from the four corners and her food was of

the meagerest; nevertheless if a visitor left an offering

upon her table, it was largely spent for apparatus or deli-

cately colored silk floss, with which to pursue the fascinat-

ing experiment. Another sadly crippled old woman, the

widow of a sea captain, although living almost exclusively

upon malted milk tablets as affording a cheap form of pre-

pared food, was always eager to talk of the beautiful illu-

minated manuscripts she had sought out in her travels and

to show specimens of her own work as an illuminator. Still

another of these impressive old women was an inveterate

inventor. Although she had seen prosperous days in Eng-

land, when we knew her, she subsisted largely upon the

samples given away at the demonstration counters of the

department stores, and on bits of food which she cooked

on a coal shovel in the furnace of the apartment house

whose basement back room she occupied. Although her

inventions were not practicable, various experts to whom

they were submitted always pronounced them suggestive

and ingenious. I once saw her receive this complimentary

verdict—”this ribbon to stick in her coat”—with such dig-

nity and gravity, that the words of condolence for her

financial disappointment, died upon my lips.

These indomitable souls are but three out of many,

whom I might instance to prove that those who are handi-

capped in the race for life’s goods, sometimes play a mag-

nificent trick upon the jade, life herself, by ceasing to know

whether or not they possess any of her tawdry goods and

chattels.

Source:

Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House, Champaign: Univer-

sity of Illinois Press, 1990.

1214 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

Mann Act of 1910

Legislation enacted by the U.S. Congress June 25, 1910, pro-

hibiting the interstate transportation of women and girls for

“immoral purposes.” Named for its sponsor, Representative

James Robert Mann of Illinois, the act was intended to curb

prostitution and the importation of women for purposes of

prostitution. The Mann Act marked an important extension of

federal involvement in national social problems, based on

Congress’s constitutional power to regulate commerce.

Although challenged as an unwarranted restriction on inter-

state commerce, an intrusion into state jurisdiction, and an

overstepping of congressional power, the act was upheld by

the U.S. Supreme Court.

It also provided an avenue for the Department of Justice

to bring individuals it considered criminal or suspect into the

federal orbit. Best known of these cases were ones against the

black boxer Jack Johnson (who married the white woman he

crossed state lines with) and the head of the Louisiana Ku Klux

Klan.

________________________

_______________________

An Act

To further regulate interstate and foreign commerce by

prohibiting the transportation therein for immoral pur-

poses of women and girls, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-

tives of the United States of America in Congress assem-

bled, That the term “interstate commerce,” as used in this

Act, shall include transportation from any State or Terri-

tory or the District of Columbia to any other State or Ter-

ritory or the District of Columbia, and the term “foreign

commerce,” as used in this Act, shall include transporta-

tion from any State or Territory or the District of

Columbia to any foreign country and from any foreign

country to any State or Territory or the District of

Columbia.

Sec. 2. That any person who shall knowingly transport

or cause to be transported, or aid or assist in obtaining

transportation for, or in transporting, in interstate or for-

eign commerce, or in any Territory or in the District of

Columbia, any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitu-

tion or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose, or

with the intent and purpose to induce, entice, or compel

such woman or girl to become a prostitute or to give her-

self up to debauchery, or to engage in any other immoral

practice; or who shall knowingly procure or obtain, or

cause to be procured or obtained, or aid or assist in procur-

ing or obtaining, any ticket or tickets, or any form of trans-

portation or evidence of the right thereto, to be used by

any woman or girl in interstate or foreign commerce, or in

any Territory or the District of Columbia, in going to any

place for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for

any other immoral purpose, or with the intent or purpose

on the part of such person to induce, entice, or compel her

to give herself up to the practice of prostitution, or to give

herself up to debauchery, or any other immoral practice,

whereby any such woman or girl shall be transported in

interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or the

District of Columbia, shall be deemed guilty of a felony,

and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine

not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment of

not more than five years, or by both such fine and impris-

onment, in the discretion of the court.

Sec. 3. That any person who shall knowingly persuade,

induce, entice, or coerce, or cause to be persuaded,

induced, enticed, or coerced, or aid or assist in persuading,

inducing, enticing, or coercing any woman or girl to go

from one place to another in interstate or foreign com-

merce, or in any Territory or the District of Columbia, for

the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other

immoral purpose, or with the intent and purpose on the

part of such person that such woman or girl shall engage in

the practice of prostitution or debauchery, or any other

immoral practice, whether with or without her consent,

and who shall thereby knowingly cause or aid or assist in

causing such woman or girl to go and to be carried or

transported as a passenger upon the line or route of any

common carrier or carriers in interstate or foreign com-

merce, or any Territory or the District of Columbia, shall

be deemed guilty of a felony and on conviction thereof

shall be punished by a fine of not more than five thousand

dollars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding five

years, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the dis-

cretion of the court.

Sec. 4. That any person who shall knowingly persuade,

induce, entice, or coerce any woman or girl under the age

of eighteen years from any State or Territory or the Dis-

trict of Columbia to any other State or Territory or the Dis-

trict of Columbia, with the purpose and intent to induce or

coerce her, or that she shall be induced or coerced to

engage in prostitution or debauchery, or any other

immoral practice, and shall in furtherance of such purpose

knowingly induce or cause her to go and to be carried or

transported as a passenger in interstate commerce upon

the line or route of any common carrier or carriers, shall be

deemed guilty of a felony, and on conviction thereof shall

be punished by a fine of not more than ten thousand dol-

lars, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten

years, or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the dis-

cretion of the court.

Sec. 5. That any violation of any of the above sections

two, three and four shall be prosecuted in any court having

jurisdiction of crimes within the district in which said vio-

Progressivism 1215

lation was committed, or from, through, or into which any

such woman or girl may have been carried or transported

as a passenger in interstate or foreign commerce, or in any

Territory or the District of Columbia, contrary to the pro-

visions of any of said sections.

Sec. 6. That for the purpose of regulating and pre-

venting the transportation in foreign commerce of alien

women and girls for purposes of prostitution and

debauchery, and in pursuance of and for the purpose of

carrying out the terms of the agreement or project of

arrangement for the suppression of the white-slave traffic,

adopted July twenty-fifth, nineteen hundred and two, for

submission to their respective governments by the dele-

gates of various powers represented at the Paris confer-

ence and confirmed by a formal agreement signed at Paris

on May eighteenth, nineteen hundred and four, and

adhered to by the United States on June sixth, nineteen

hundred and eight, as shown by the proclamation of the

President of the United States, dated June fifteenth, nine-

teen hundred and eight, the Commissioner-General of

Immigration is hereby designated as the authority of the

United States to receive and centralize information con-

cerning the procuration of alien women and girls with a

view to their debauchery, and to exercise supervision over

such alien women and girls, receive their declarations,

establish their identity, and ascertain from them who

induced them to leave their native countries, respectively;

and it shall be the duty of said Commissioner-General of

Immigration to receive and keep on file in his office the

statements and declarations which may be made by such

alien women and girls, and those which are hereinafter

required pertaining to such alien women and girls

engaged in prostitution or debauchery in this country, and

to furnish receipts for such statements and declarations

provided for in this act to the persons, respectively, mak-

ing and filing them.

Every person who shall keep, maintain, control, sup-

port, or harbor in any house or place for the purpose of

prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose, any alien

woman or girl within three years after she shall have

entered the United States from any country, party to the

said arrangement for the suppression of the white-slave

traffic, shall file with the Commissioner-General of Immi-

gration a statement in writing setting forth the name of

such alien woman or girl, the place at which she is kept,

and all facts as to the date of her entry into the United

States, the port through which she entered, her age,

nationality, and parentage, and concerning her procuration

to come to this country within the knowledge of such per-

son, and any person who shall fail within thirty days after

such person shall commence to keep, maintain, control,

support, or harbor in any house or place for the purpose of

prostitution, or for any other immoral purpose, any alien

woman or girl within three years after she shall have

entered the United States from any of the countries, party

to the said arrangement for the suppression of the white-

slave traffic, to file such statement concerning such alien

woman or girl with the Commissioner-General of Immi-

gration, or who shall knowingly and willfully state falsely or

fail to disclose in such statement any fact within his knowl-

edge or belief with reference to the age, nationality, or

parentage of any such alien woman or girl, or concerning

her procuration to come to this country, shall be deemed

guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction shall be pun-

ished by a fine of not more than two thousand dollars, or

by imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or by

both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the

court.

In any prosecution brought under this section, if it

appear that any such statement required is not on file in

the office of the Commissioner-General of Immigration,

the person whose duty it shall be to file such statement

shall be presumed to have failed to file said statement, as

herein required, unless such person or persons shall prove

otherwise. No person shall be excused from furnishing the

statement, as required by this section, on the ground or for

the reason that the statement so required by him, or the

information therein contained, might tend to criminate

him or subject him to a penalty or forfeiture, but no per-

son shall be prosecuted or subjected to any penalty or for-

feiture under any law of the United States for or on

account of any transaction, matter, or thing, concerning

which he may truthfully report in such statement, as

required by the provisions of this section.

Sec. 7. That the term “Territory,” as used in this Act,

shall include the district of Alaska, the insular possessions

of the United States, and the Canal Zone. The word “per-

son,” as used in this Act, shall be construed to import both

the plural and the singular, as the case demands, and shall

include corporations, companies, societies, and associa-

tions. When construing and enforcing the provisions of

this Act, the act, omission, or failure of any officer, agent,

or other person, acting for or employed by any other per-

son or by any corporation, company, society, or association

within the scope of his employment or office, shall in

every case be also deemed to be the act, omission or fail-

ure of such other person, or of such company, corpora-

tion, society, or association, as well as that of the person

himself.

Sec. 8. That this Act shall be known and referred to as

the “White-slave traffic Act.”

Source:

Statutes at Large, Vol. 36, pp. 825–827.

1216 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

Theodore Roosevelt,

“New Nationalism,” 1910

Speech delivered by former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt

at Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910, outlining his pro-

gressive New Nationalism program. Breaking with conserva-

tives in his own Republican Party, Roosevelt called for a strong

national government, federal regulation of the corporate system,

and the protection of human rights over property rights. He

argued for the Square Deal (a term he had coined in 1904 to

stand for his ideas on government’s responsibilities as an even-

handed mediator between special interest groups), for equal

opportunity for all citizens, for fair wages and working condi-

tions, for government free of control by special interests, and for

prohibitions on corporate funding of political activity. “The

object of government,” he said, “is the welfare of the people.”

In its August 1912 national nominating convention in

Chicago, the Progressive, or Bull Moose, Party adopted a plat-

form that contained much of Roosevelt’s New Nationalism.

Former president Theodore Roosevelt assumed leadership of

the progressive Republicans, who felt politically alienated

from Roosevelt’s successor, President William H. Taft. They

accused Taft of having betrayed the principles of Roosevelt’s

New Nationalism to assuage Republican conservatives. Roo-

sevelt and his progressive-reformer followers denounced Taft’s

June renomination and seceded from Republican ranks to

form a third party, which gathered at Chicago in early August

and nominated Roosevelt as its presidential candidate. The

Progressive platform, titled “A Contract with the People,”

embodied the upstart party’s reformist aspirations for social

and economic justice and conservation. It advocated tariff

reduction, strict regulation of industrial combinations, recall of

judicial decisions, woman suffrage, direct election of U.S. sen-

ators, abolition of child labor, and a minimum wage for work-

ing women. Virtually all of its provisions would eventually be

enacted.

________________________

_______________________

We come here to-day to commemorate one of the epoch-

making events of the long struggle for the rights of man—

the long struggle for the uplift of humanity. Our

country—this great republic—means nothing unless it

means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of

popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic

system under which each man shall be guaranteed the

opportunity to show the best that there is in him. That is

why the history of America is now central feature of the

history of the world; for the world has set its face hopefully

toward our democracy; and, O my fellow citizens, each one

of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of

doing well for the sake of your own country, but the bur-

den of doing well and seeing that this nation does well for

the sake of mankind.

There have been two great crises in our country’s his-

tory: first, when it was formed, and then, again, when it

was perpetuated; and, in the second of these great crises—

in the time of stress and strain which culminated in the

Civil War, on the outcome of which depended the justifi-

cation of what had been done earlier, you men of the

Grand Army, you men who fought through the Civil War,

not only did you justify your generation, not only did you

render life worth living for our generation, but you justi-

fied the wisdom of Washington and Washington’s col-

leagues. If this republic had been founded by them only to

be split asunder into fragments when the strain came, then

the judgment of the world would have been that Washing-

ton’s work was not worth doing. It was you who crowned

Washington’s work, as you carried to achievement the high

purpose of Abraham Lincoln.

Now, with this second period of our history the name

of John Brown will be forever associated; and Kansas was

the theater upon which the first act of the second of our

great national life dramas was played. It was the result of

the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country

should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union

and freedom; that the great experiment of democratic gov-

ernment on a national scale should succeed and not fail. In

name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776;

but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Decla-

ration of Independence until 1865; and words count for

nothing except in so far as they represent acts. This is true

everywhere; but, O my friends, it should be truest of all in

political life. A broken promise is bad enough in private

life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his

salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which

he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a

pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life. I

care for the great deeds of the past chiefly as spurs to drive

us onward in the present. I speak of the men of the past

partly that they may be honored by our praise of them, but

more that they may serve as examples for the future.

It was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevitable with all

such struggles, it had also a dark and terrible side. Very

much was done of good, and much also of evil; and, as was

inevitable in such a period of revolution, often the same

man did both good and evil. For our great good fortune as

a nation, we, the people of the United States as a whole,

can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least, to remember

it without bitterness, and to fix our eyes with pride only on

the good that was accomplished. Even in ordinary times

there are very few of us who do not see the problems of

life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is

clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision

Progressivism 1217

of the best and the bravest is dimmed. Looking back, we

are all of us now able to do justice to the valor and the dis-

interestedness and the love of the right, as to each it was

given to see the right, shown both by the men of the

North and the men of the South in that contest which was

finally decided by the attitude of the West. We can admire

the heroic valor, the sincerity, the self-devotion shown

alike by the men who wore the blue and the men who

wore the gray; and our sadness that such men should have

had to fight one another is tempered by the glad knowl-

edge that ever hereafter their descendants shall be found

fighting side by side, struggling in peace as well as in war

for the uplift of their common country, all alike resolute to

raise to the highest pitch of honor and usefulness the

nation to which they all belong. As for the veterans of the

Grand Army of the Republic, they deserve honor an

recognition such as is paid to no other citizens of the

republic; for to them the republic owes its all; for to them

it owes its very existence. It is because of what you and

your comrades did in the dark years that we of to-day

walk, each of us, head erect, and proud that we belong,

not to one of a dozen little squabbling contemptible com-

monwealths, but to the mightiest nation upon which the

sun shines.

I do not speak of this struggle of the past merely from

the historic standpoint. Our interest is primarily in the

application to-day of the lessons taught by the contest of

half a century ago. It is of little use for us to pay lip loyalty

to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor

to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qual-

ities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to

meet those crises. It is half melancholy and half amusing to

see the way in which well-meaning people gather to do

honor to the men who, in company with John Brown, and

under the lead of Abraham Lincoln, faced and solved the

great problems of the nineteenth century, while, at the

same time, these same good people nervously shrink from,

or frantically denounce, those who are trying to meet the

problems of the twentieth century in the spirit which was

accountable for the successful solution of the problems of

Lincoln’s time.

Of that generation of men to whom we owe so much,

the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part

of our debt to him is because he forecast our present strug-

gle and saw the way out. He said:

I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve

not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating

mankind.

And again:

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital

is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if

labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital,

and deserves much the higher consideration.

If that remark was original with me, I should be even

more strongly denounced as a communist agitator than I

shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln’s. I am only quoting it; and

that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear.

Now, let the workingman hear his side.

Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protec-

tion as any other rights . . . Nor should this lead to a war

upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor;

. . . property is desirable; is a positive good in the world.

And then comes a thoroughly Lincolnlike sentence:

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of

another, but let him work diligently and build one for him-

self, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe

from violence when built.

It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln took sub-

stantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the

proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of cap-

ital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above

all, in this speech, as in many others, he taught a lesson in

wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us

of to-day. But this wise kindliness and charity never weak-

ened his arm or numbed his heart. We cannot afford

weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces

us to-day. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.

In every wise struggle for human betterment one of

the main objects, and often the only object, has been to

achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the

struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to

civilization, and through it people press forward from one

stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors

in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The

essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been,

and must always be, to take from some one man or class of

men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or

immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or

their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War,

and that is what we strive for now,

At many stages in the advance of humanity, this con-

flict between the men who possess more than they have

earned and the men who have earned more than they pos-

sess is the central condition of progress. In our day it

appears as the struggle of free men to gain and hold the

right of self-government as against the special interests,

who twist the methods of free government into machinery

for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all

circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize

opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citi-

zenship of every individual the highest possible value both

to himself and to the commonwealth. That is nothing new.

All I ask in civil life is what you fought for in the Civil War.

I ask that civil life be carried on according to the spirit in

which the army was carried on. You never get perfect jus-

tice, but the effort in handling the army was to bring to the

1218 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

front the men who could do the job. Nobody grudged pro-

motion to Grant, or Sherman, or Thomas, or Sheridan,

because they earned it. The only complaint was when a

man got promotion which he did not earn.

Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when

we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man

will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him

lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities,

unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered

by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get

for himself and his family substantially what he has earned.

Second, equality of opportunity means that the common-

wealth will get from every citizen the highest service of

which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the

special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth

that service to which it is fairly entitled.

I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am

for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair

play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand

for having those rules changed so as to work for a more

substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for

equally good service. One word of warning, which, I think,

is hardly necessary in Kansas. When I say I want a square

deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square

deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got

the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a

chance will not make good, then he has got to quit. And

you men of the Grand Army, you want justice for the brave

man who fought, and punishment for the coward who

shirked his work. Is not that so?

Now, this means that our government, national and

state, must be freed from the sinister influence or control

of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cot-

ton and slavery threatened our political integrity before

the Civil War, so now the great special business interests

too often control and corrupt the men and methods of gov-

ernment for their own profit. We must drive the special

interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks to-day.

Every special interest is entitled to justice—full, fair, and

complete,—and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt

by mob violence to plunder and work harm to the special

interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the

wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the

greatest contempt, I would fight for him, and you would if

you were worth your salt. He should have justice. For

every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is

entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or

to representation in any public office. The Constitution

guarantees protection to property, and we must make that

promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to

any corporation.

The true friend of property, the true conservative, is

he who insists that property shall be the servant and not

the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the crea-

ture of man’s making shall be the servant and not the mas-

ter of the man who made it. The citizens of the United

States must effectively control the mighty commercial

forces which they have themselves called into being.

There can be no effective control of corporations

while their political activity remains. To put an end to it

will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

We must have complete and effective publicity of cor-

porate affairs, so that the people may know beyond perad-

venture whether the corporations obey the law and

whether their management entitles them to the confi-

dence of the public. It is necessary the laws should be

passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or

indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary

that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate

expenditures for political purposes, and especially such

expenditures by public service corporations, have supplied

one of the principal sources of corruption in our political

affairs.

It has become entirely clear that we must have gov-

ernment supervision of the capitalization, not only of pub-

lic service corporations, including, particularly, railways,

but of all corporations doing an interstate business. I do

not wish to see the nation forced into the ownership of the

railways if it can possibly be avoided, and the only alterna-

tive is thoroughgoing and effective regulation, which shall

be based on a full knowledge of all the facts, including a

physical valuation of property. This physical valuation is

not needed, or, at least, is very rarely needed, for fixing

rates; but it is needed as the basis of honest capitalization.

We have come to recognize that franchises should

never be granted except for a limited time, and never with-

out proper provision for compensation to the public. It is

my personal belief that the same kind and degree of con-

trol and supervision which should be exercised over public

service corporations should be extended also to combina-

tions which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil,

and coal, or which deal in them on an important scale. I

have no doubt that the ordinary man who has control of

them is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he would like

to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help

him realize that desire to do well.

I believe that the officers, and, especially, the direc-

tors, of corporations should be held personally responsible

when any corporation breaks the law.

Combinations in industry are the result of an impera-

tive economic law which cannot be repealed by political

legislation. The effort at prohibiting all combination has

substantially failed. The way out lies, not in attempting to

prevent such combinations, but in completely controlling

them in the interest of the public welfare. For that purpose

the Federal Bureau of Corporations is an agency of first

Progressivism 1219

importance. Its powers, and, therefore, its efficiency, as

well as that of the Interstate Commerce Commission,

should be largely increased. We have a right to expect from

the Bureau of Corporations and from the Interstate Com-

merce Commission a very high grade of public service. We

should be as sure of the proper conduct of the interstate

railways and the proper management of interstate business

as we are now sure of the conduct and management of the

national banks, and we should have as effective supervision

in one case as in the other. The Hepburn Act, and the

amendment to the Act in the shape in which it finally

passed Congress at the last session, represent a long step

in advance, and we must go yet further.

There is a widespread belief among our people that,

under the methods of making tariffs which have hitherto

obtained, the special interests are too influential. Probably

this is true of both the big special interests and the little

special interests. These methods have put a premium on

selfishness, and, naturally, the selfish big interests have

gotten more than their smaller, though equally selfish,

brothers. The duty of Congress is to provide a method by

which the interest of the whole people shall be all that

receives consideration. To this end there must be an expert

tariff commission, wholly removed from the possibility of

political pressure or of improper business influence. Such

a commission can find the real difference between cost of

production, which is mainly the difference of labor cost

here and abroad. As fast as its recommendations are made,

I believe in revising one schedule at a time. A general revi-

sion of the tariff almost inevitably leads to log-rolling and

the subordination of the general public interest to local

and special interests.

The absence of effective state, and, especially,

national, restraint upon unfair money getting has tended to

create a small class of enormously wealthy and economi-

cally powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and

increase their power. The prime need is to change the con-

ditions which enable these men to accumulate power

which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold

or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents

his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire

regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over

there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only

did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of

the great generals who gained their promotion by leading

the army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a

fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well

used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained

without doing damage to the community. We should per-

mit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents

benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of

a far more active governmental interference with social

and economic conditions in this country than we have yet

had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an

increase in governmental control is now necessary.

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has

been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent

a dollar’s worth of service rendered—not gambling in

stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the

swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qual-

ities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from

what is possessed by men of relatively small means. There-

fore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes,

and in another tax which is far more easily collected and

far more effective—a graduated inheritance tax on big for-

tunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing

rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

The people of the United States suffer from periodi-

cal financial panics to a degree substantially unknown

among the other nations which approach us in financial

strength. There is no reason why we should suffer what

they escape. It is of profound importance that our financial

system should be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly

and effectively revised as to make it certain that hereafter

our currency will no longer fail at critical times to meet our

needs.

It is hardly necessary for me to repeat that I believe in

an efficient army and a navy large enough to secure for us

abroad that respect which is the surest guarantee of peace.

A word of special warning to my fellow citizens who are as

progressive as I hope I am. I want them to keep up their

interest in our internal affairs; and I want them also con-

tinually to remember Uncle Sam’s interests abroad. Justice

and fair dealing among nations rest upon principles identi-

cal with those which cannot justice and fair dealing among

the individuals of which nations are composed, with the

vital exception that each nation must do its own part in

international police work. If you get into trouble here, you

can call for the police; but if Uncle Sam gets into trouble,

he has got to be his own policeman, and I want to see him

strong enough to encourage the peaceful aspirations of

other peoples in connection with us. I believe in national

friendships and heartiest good will to all nations; but

national friendships, like those between men, must be

founded on respect as well as on liking, on forbearance as

well as upon trust. I should be heartily ashamed of any

American who did not try to make the American govern-

ment act as justly toward the other nations in international

relations as he himself would act toward any individual in

private relations. I should be heartily ashamed to see us

wrong a weaker power, and I should hang my head forever

if we tamely suffered wrong from a stronger power.

Of conservation I shall speak more at length else-

where. Conservation means development as much as it

does protection. I recognized the right and duty of this

generation to develop and use the natural resources of our

1220 ERA 7: The Emergence of Modern America

land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to

rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I

ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each

farmer here behaves with reference to his own children.

That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and

leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good

farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself

and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it

to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe

the same thing of a nation.

Moreover, I believe that the natural resources must be

used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized

for the benefit of the few, and here again is another case in

which I am accused of taking a revolutionary attitude. Peo-

ple forget now that one hundred years ago there were pub-

lic men of good character who advocated the nation selling

its public lands in great quantities, so that the nation could

get the most money out of it, and giving it to the men who

could cultivate it for their own uses. We took the proper

democratic ground that the land should be granted in

small sections to the men who were actually to till it and

live on it. Now, with the water power, with the forests, with

the mines, we are brought face to face with the fact that

there are many people who will go with us in conserving

the resources only if they are to be allowed to exploit them

for their benefit. That is one of the fundamental reasons

why the special interests should be driven out of politics.

Of all the questions which can come before this nation,

short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great

war, there is none which compares in importance with the

great central task of leaving this land even a better land for

our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a

better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation

is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of

insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me

add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as

well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and

minerals, and in this great work the national government

must bear a most important part.

I have spoken elsewhere also of the great task which

lies before the farmers of the country to get for themselves

and their wives and children not only the benefits of bet-

ter farming, but also those of better business methods and

better conditions of life on the farm. The burden of this

great task will fall, as it should, mainly upon the great orga-

nizations of the farmers themselves. I am glad it will, for I

believe they are all well able to handle it. In particular,

there are strong reasons why the Departments of Agricul-

ture of the various states, the United States Department of

Agriculture, and the agricultural colleges and experiment

stations should extend their work to cover all phases of

farm life, instead of limiting themselves, as they have far

too often limited themselves, in the past, solely to the

question of the production of crops. And now a special

word to the farmer. I want to see him make the farm as

fine a farm as it can be made; and let him remember to see

that the improvement goes on indoors as well as out; let

him remember that the farmer’s wife should have her

share of thought and attention just as much as the farmer

himself.

Nothing is more true than that excess of every kind is

followed by reaction; a fact which should be pondered by

reformer and reactionary alike. We are face to face with

new conceptions of the relations of property to human

welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of

property as against the rights of men have been pushing

their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every

human right is secondary to his profit must now give way

to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains

that every man holds his property subject to the general

right of the community to regulate its use to whatever

degree the public welfare may require it.

But I think we may go still further. The right to regu-

late the use of wealth in the public interest is universally

admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms

and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of

wealth, directly in the interest of the common good. The

fundamental thing to do for every man is to give him a

chance to reach a place in which he will make the greatest

possible contribution to the public welfare. Understand

what I say there. Give him a chance, not push him up if he

will not be pushed. Help any man who stumbles; if he lies

down, it is a poor job to try to carry him; but if he is a wor-

thy man, try your best to see that he gets a chance to show

the worth that is in him. No man can be a good citizen

unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare

cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so that after

his day’s work is done he will have time and energy to bear

his share in the management of the community, to help in

carrying the general load. We keep countless men from

being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we

surround them. We need comprehensive workmen’s com-

pensation acts, both state and national laws to regulate

child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need

in our common schools not merely education in book

learning, but also practical training for daily life and work.

We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our

workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for our

workers in industry and commerce, both within and

between the states. Also, friends, in the interest of the

workingman himself we need to set our faces like flint

against mob violence just as against corporate greed;

against violence and injustice and lawlessness by wage

workers just as much as against lawless cunning and greed

and selfish arrogance of employers. If I could ask but one

thing of my fellow countrymen, my request would be that,

Progressivism 1221