Ohio History Journal

The McKinley Monument.              229     ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. We have gathered together to-day to pay our meed of re- spect and affection to the memory of William McKinley, who

as President won a place in the hearts of the American people such as but three or four of all the Presidents of this country have ever won. He was of sin- gular uprightness and purity of character, alike in public and in private life; a citizen who loved peace, he did his duty faithfully and well for four years of war when the honor of the nation called him to arms. As Con- gressman, as Governor of his State, and finally as President, he rose to the foremost place among our statesmen, reaching a position which would satisfy the

keenest ambition; but he never lost that simple and thoughtful kindness toward every human being, great or small, lofty or humble, with whom he was brought in contact, which so en- deared him to our people. He had to grapple with more serious and complex problems than any President since Lincoln, and yet, while meeting every demand of statesmanship, he continued to live a beautiful and touching family life, a life very healthy for this nation to see in its foremost citizen; and now the woman who walked in the shadow ever after his death, the wife to whom his loss was a calamity more crushing than it could be to any other human being, lies beside him here in the same sepulchre. There is a singular appropriateness in the inscription on his monument. Mr. Cortelyou, whose relations with him were of such close intimacy, gives me the following information about it: On the President's trip to the Pacific slope in the spring of 19O1 President Wheeler, of the University of California, con- ferred the degree of LL. D. upon him in words so well chosen

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230      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

that they struck the fastidious taste of John Hay, then Secretary

of State, who wrote and asked for a copy of them from President

Wheeler. On the receipt of this copy he sent the following let-

ter to President McKinley, a letter which now seems filled with

a strange and unconscious prescience:

 

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT

President Wheeler sent me the enclosed at my request.

You will have the words in more permanent shape. They seem

to me remarkably well chosen, and stately and dignified enough

to serve - long hence, please God - as your epitaph.

Yours faithfully,

JOHN HAY.

 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, ]

Office of the President.  ]

"By authority vested in me by the regents of the University

of California, I confer the degree of Doctor of Laws upon Wil-

liam McKinley, President of the United States, a statesman

singularly gifted to unite the discordant forces of the Govern-

ment and mold the diverse purposes of men toward progressive

and salutary action, a magistrate whose poise of judgment has

been tested and vindicated in a succession of national emergen-

cies; good citizen, brave soldier, wise executive, helper and

leader of men, exemplar to his people of the virtues that build

and conserve the state, society, and the home.

"Berkeley, May 15, 1901."

 

It would be hard to imagine an epitaph which a good citizen

would be more anxious to deserve or one which would more

happily describe the qualities of that great and good citizen

whose life we here commemorate. He possessed to a very ex-

traordinary degree the gift of uniting discordant forces and

securing from them a harmonious action which told for good

government.  From purposes not merely diverse, but bitterly

conflicting, he was able to secure healthful action for the good

of the State. In both poise and judgment he rose level to the

several emergencies he had to meet as leader of the nation, and

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The McKinley Monument.               231

 

like all men with the root of time greatness in them he grew to

steadily larger stature under the stress of heavy responsibilities.

He was a good citizen and a brave soldier, a Chief Executive

whose wisdom entitled him to the trust which he received

throughout the nation. He was not only a leader of men but pre-

eminently a helper of men; for one of his most marked traits

was the intensely human quality of his wide and deep sympathy.

Finally, he not merely preached, he was, that most valuable of

all citizens in a democracy like ours, a man who in the highest

place served as an unconscious example to his people of the

virtues that build and conserve alike our public life, and the

foundation of all public life, the intimate life of the home.

Many lessons are taught us by his career, but none more

valuable than the lesson of broad human sympathy for and

among all of our citizens of all classes and creeds. No other

President has ever more deserved to have his life work charac-

terized in Lincoln's words as being carried on "with malice to-

ward none, with charity toward all." As a boy he worked hard

with his hands; he entered the Army as a private soldier; he

knew poverty; he earned his own livelihood; and by his own

exertions he finally rose to the position of a man of moderate

means. Not merely was he in personal touch with farmer and

town dweller, with capitalist and wageworker, but he felt an

intimate understanding of each, and therefore an intimate sym-

pathy with each; and his consistent effort was to try to judge

all by the same standard and to treat all with the same justice.

Arrogance toward the weak, and envious hatred of those well

off, were equally abhorrent to his just and gentle soul.

Surely this attitude of his should be the attitude of all our

people to-day. It would be a cruel disaster to this country to

permit ourselves to adopt an attitude of hatred and envy toward

success worthily won, toward wealth honestly acquired. Let us

in this respect profit by the example of the republics of this

Western Hemisphere to the south of us. Some of these repub-

lics have prospered greatly; but there are certain ones that have

lagged far behind, that still continue in a condition of material

poverty, of social and political unrest and confusion. Without

exception the republics of the former class are those in which

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232      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

honest industry has been assured of reward and protection; those

where a cordial welcome has been extended to the kind of enter-

prise which benefits the whole country, while incidentally, as is

right and proper, giving substantial rewards to those who man-

ifest it. On the other hand, the poor and backward republics,

the republics in which the lot of the average citizen is least de-

sirable, and the lot of the laboring man worst of all, are pre-

cisely those republics in which industry has been killed because

wealth exposed its owner to spoliation. To these communities

foreign capital now rarely comes, because it has been found that

as soon as capital is employed so as to give substantial remu-

neration to those supplying it, it excites ignorant envy and hos-

tility, which result in such oppressive action, within or without

the law, as sooner or later to work a virtual confiscation. Every

manifestation of feeling of this kind in our civilization should be

crushed at the outset by the weight of a sensible public opinion.

From the standpoint of our material prosperity there is only

one other thing as important as the discouragement of a spirit

of envy and hostility toward honest business men, toward hon-

est men of means; this is the discouragement of dishonest busi-

ness men.

Wait a moment; I don't want you to applaud this part un-

less you are willing to applaud also the part I read first, to which

you listened in silence. I want you to understand that I will

stand just as straight for the rights of the honest man who

wins his fortune by honest methods as I will stand against the

dishonest man who wins a fortune by dishonest methods. And

I challenge the right to your support in one attitude just as much

as in the other. I am glad you applauded when you did, but I

want you to go back now and applaud the other statement. I

will read a little of it over again. "Every manifestation of

ignorant envy and hostility toward honest men who acquire

wealth by honest means should be crushed at the outset by the

weight of a sensible public opinion." Thank you. Now I'll

go on.

From the standpoint of our material prosperity there is only

one other thing as important as the discouragement of a spirit

of envy and hostility toward honest business men, toward hon-

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The McKinley Monument.                 233

 

est men of means, and that is the discouragement of dishonest

business men, the war upon chicanery and wrongdoing which are

peculiarly repulsive, peculiarly noxious when exhibited by men

who have no excuse of want, of poverty, of ignorance for their

crimes. My friends, I will wage war against those dishonest

men to the utmost extent of my ability, and I will stand no less

stoutly in defense of honest men, rich or poor. Men of means

and, above all, men of great wealth can exist in safety under the

peaceful protection of the state only in orderly societies, where

liberty manifests itself through and under the law. That is

what you fought for, you veterans. You fought for the suprem-

acy of the national law in every corner of this Republic. It is

these men, the men of wealth, who more than any others, should

in the interest of the class to which they belong, in the interest

of their children and their children's children, seek in every way,

but especially in the conduct of their lives, to insist upon and to

build up respect for the law. It is an extraordinary thing, a

very extraordinary thing, that it should be necessary for me to

utter as simple a truth as that; yet it is necessary. It may not

be true from the standpoint of some particular individual of

this class of very wealthy men, but in the long run it is pre-

eminently true from the standpoint of the class as a whole, no

less than of the country as a whole, that it is a veritable calamity

to achieve a temporary triumph by violation or evasion of the

law, and we are the best friends of the man of property, we

show ourselves the staunchest upholders of the rights of property

when we set our faces like flint against those offenders who do

wrong in order to acquire great wealth, or who use this wealth

as a help to wrongdoing.

I sometimes feel that I have trenched a little on your prov-

ince, Brother Bristol, and on that of your brethren, by preaching.

But whenever I speak of the wrongdoing of a man of wealth

or of a man of poverty, poor man or rich man, I always want

to try to couple together the fact that wrongdoing is wrong just

as much in one case as in the other, with the fact that right is

just as much right in one case as in the other. I want the plain

people of this country, I want all of us who do not have great

wealth, to remember that in our own interest, and because it is

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234      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

right, we must be just as scrupulous in doing justice to the

man of great wealth as in exacting justice from him.

Wrongdoing is confined to no class. Good and evil are to

be found among both rich and poor, and in drawing the line

among our fellows we must draw it on conduct and not on

worldly possessions. Woe to this country if we ever get to

judging men by anything save their worth as men, without re-

gard to their fortune in life. In other words, my plea is that

you draw the line on conduct and not on worldly possessions.

In the abstract most of us will admit this. It is a rather more

difficult proposition in the concrete. We can act upon such doc-

trines only if we really have knowledge of, and sympathy with,

one another. If both the wage-worker and the capitalist are

able to enter each into the other's life, to meet him so as to get

into genuine sympathy with him, most of the misunderstand

between them will disappear and its place will be taken by a judg-

ment broader, juster, more kindly, and more generous; for each

will find in the other the same essential human attributes that

exist in himself. It was President McKinley's peculiar glory

that in actual practice he realized this as it is given to but few

men to realize it; that his broad and deep sympathies made him

feel a genuine sense of oneness with all his fellow-Americans,

whatever their station or work in life, so that to his soul they

were all joined with him in a great brotherly democracy of the

spirit. It is not given to many of us in our lives actually to

realize this attitude to the extent that he did; but we can at least

have it before us as the goal of our endeavor, and by so doing

we shall pay honor better than in any other way to the memory

of the dead President whose services in life we this day com-

memorate.

REMARKS OF GOVERNOR ANDREW L. HARRIS.

I thank you, Mr. Justice Day, and your associates of the

McKinley National Memorial Association for the very great

honor that you have conferred on me in inviting me to preside

over the exercises of this memorable dedication. It is indeed an

honor to present at any time to any audience the President of

the United States. But on this occasion when we are assembled

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