AT THE DEDICATION CEREMONIES OF THE NEW STATE CAPITOL BUILDING 

HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 

OCTOBER 4, 1906 

It is a very real pleasure for me to attend these 
ceremonies at the capital of your great State. In 
every great crisis of our Government the attitude 
of Pennsylvania has been of crucial importance, as 
the affectionate nickname of "Keystone State" sig 
nifies. Pennsylvania has always looked warily be 
fore she leaped, and it was well that she should do 
so. But having finally made up her mind, in each 
great crisis of our national history, her weight has 
been cast unhesitatingly upon the right side, and 
has been found irresistible. This was true alike 
at the time of the Declaration of Independence, 
at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, 
and during the terrible years when the issue was 
the preservation of the Union. 


Pennsylvania s soil is historic. It was within 
Pennsylvania s borders that the contest opened 
which was to decide whether the valiant soldiers of 
France would be able to bar this continent against 
the domination of the people of the English-speak 
ing colonies. It was on Pennsylvania s soil that 
the Declaration of Independence was signed and 
the Constitutional Convention held. It was in 
Pennsylvania that Washington wintered at Valley 
Forge, and by keeping his army together during 
that winter definitely turned the scales in our favor 
in the contest for independence. It was again on 
Pennsylvania s soil, at Gettysburg, that the tide 
turned in the Civil War. In the composition of 
her people, moreover, Pennsylvania has epitomized 
the composition of our Union; for here many Old 
World races have mingled their blood to make that 
new type, the American. Finally, in all branches of 
the public service, in peace and in war, the native or 
adopted citizens of Pennsylvania have attained the 
highest eminence. 

I do not, however, come here to-day to speak 
only of the past, and still less to appeal merely to 
State pride. We can show that the past is with us 
a living force only by the way in which we handle 
ourselves in the present, and each of us can best 
show his devotion to his own State by making evi 
dent his paramount devotion to that Union which 
includes all the States. The study of the great 
deeds of the past is of chief avail in so far as it 
incites us to grapple resolutely and effectively with 
the problems of the present. We are not now 
menaced by foreign war. Our Union is firmly 
established. But each generation has its special 
and serious difficulties; and we of this generation 
have to struggle with evils springing from the very 
material success of which we are so proud, from 
the very growth and prosperity of which, with 
justice, we boast. The extraordinary industrial 
changes of the last half century have produced 
a totally new set of conditions, under which new 
evils flourish ; and for these new evils new remedies 
must be devised. 

Some of these evils can be grappled with by 
private effort only; for we never can afford to 
forget that in the last analysis the chief factor in 
personal success, and indeed in national greatness, 
must be the sturdy, self-reliant character of the 
individual citizen. But many of these evils are of 
such a nature that no private effort can avail against 
them. These evils, therefore, must be grappled 
with by governmental action. In some cases this 
governmental action must be exercised by the sev 
eral States individually. In yet others it has be 
come increasingly evident that no efficient State 
action is possible, and that we need, through execu 
tive action, through legislation, and through judi 
cial interpretation and construction of law, to 
increase the power of the Federal Government. 

If we fail thus to increase it, we show our im 
potence and leave ourselves at the mercy of those 
ingenious legal advisers of the holders of vast 
corporate wealth, who, in the performance of what 
they regard as their duty, and to serve the ends of 
their clients, invoke the law at one time for the con 
founding of their rivals, and at another time strive 
for the nullification of the law, in order that they 
themselves may be left free to work their unbridled 
will on these same rivals, or on those who labor for 
them, or on the general public. In the exercise of 
their profession and in the service of their clients 
these astute lawyers strive to prevent the passage 
of efficient laws and strive to secure judicial deter 
minations of those that pass which shall emasculate 
them. They do not invoke the Constitution in 
order to compel the due observance of law alike by 
rich and poor, by great and small ; on the contrary, 
they are ceaselessly on the watch to cry out that 
the Constitution is violated whenever any effort is 
made to invoke the aid of the National Govern 
ment, whether for the efficient regulation of rail 
roads, for the efficient supervision of great cor 
porations, or for efficiently securing obedience to 
such a law as the national eight-hour law and 
similar so-called "labor statutes." 

The doctrine they preach would make the Con 
stitution merely the shield of incompetence and the 
excuse for governmental paralysis; they treat it as 
a justification for refusing to attempt the remedy 
of evil, instead of as the source of vital power 
necessary for the existence of a mighty and ever 
growing nation. 

Strong nationalist though I am, and firm though 
my belief is that there must be a wide extension of 
the power of the National Government to deal with 
questions of this kind, I freely admit that as re 
gards many matters of first-rate importance we 
must rely purely upon the States for the better 
ment of present conditions. The several States 
must do their duty or our citizenship can never be 
put on a proper plane. Therefore I most heartily 
congratulate the people of the State of Pennsyl 
vania on what its Legislature, upon what its gov 
ernment, has accomplished during this present year. 
It is a remarkable record of achievement. 

Through your Legislature you have abolished 
passes; you have placed the offices of the secretary 
of the Commonwealth and the insurance commis 
sioner upon an honorable and honest basis of salary 
only by abolishing the fee system; you have passed 
a law compelling the officers and employees of 
great cities to attend to the duties for which they 
are paid by all the taxpayers, and to refrain from 
using the power conferred by their offices to influ 
ence political campaigns; you have prohibited the 
solicitation or receiving of political assessments by 
city employees ; you have by law protected the State 
treasury from depredation and conserved the pub 
lic moneys for use only in the public interest; you 
have by a law for the protection of the elective 
franchise made tampering with the ballot-boxes and 
the casting of illegal votes so difficult as in all 
probability to be unprofitable; you have provided 
a primary election law which guarantees to the 
voters free expression in the selection of candidates 
for office; you have by law regulated and improved 
the civil service systems of your greatest cities; 
and, finally, you have passed a law containing a 
provision which I most earnestly hope will in sub 
stance be embodied likewise in a law by the Con 
gress at the coming session a provision prohibit 
ing the officers of any corporation from making a 
contribution of the money of that corporation to 
any candidate or any political committee for the 
payment of any election expenses whatever. 

It is surely not too much to say that this body of 
substantive legislation marks an epoch in the his 
tory of the practical betterment of political condi 
tions, not merely for your State, but for all our 
States. I do not recall any other State Legislature 
which, in a similar length of time, has to its credit 
such a body of admirable legislation. Let me, how 
ever, most earnestly urge that your Legislature 
continue this record of public service by enacting 
one or two additional laws. One subject which 
every good citizen should have at heart above al 
most all others is the matter of child labor. Every 
where the great growth of modern industrialism 
has been accompanied by abuses in connection with 
the employment of labor which have necessitated 
a complete change in the attitude of the State 
toward labor. 

This is above all true in connection with the 
employment of child labor. In Pennsylvania you 
have made a beginning, but only a beginning, in 
proper legislation and administration on this 
subject; the law must if necessary be strengthened, 
and it must be rigorously enforced. The National 
Government can do but little in the matter of child 
labor, though I earnestly hope that that little will 
be permitted to be done by Congress. The great 
bulk of the work, however, must be left to the State 
Legislatures; and if our State Legislatures would 
act as drastically and yet as wisely on this subject 
of child labor as Pennsylvania has acted within the 
present year as regards the subjects I have enu 
merated above, the gain would be literally incal 
culable; and one of the most vital needs of modern 
American life would at last be adequately met. 

So much for the State. Now for the Nation; 
and here I can not do better than base my theory 
of governmental action upon the words and deeds 
of one of Pennsylvania s greatest sons, Justice James 
Wilson. Wilson s career has been singularly over 
looked for many years, but I believe that more and 
more it is now being adequately appreciated; and I 
congratulate your State upon the fact that Wilson s 
body is to be taken away from where it now rests 
and brought back to lie, as it should, in Pennsyl 
vania soil. He was a signer of the Declaration of 
Independence. He was one of the men who saw 
that the Revolution, in which he had served as a 
soldier, would be utterly fruitless unless it was fol 
lowed by a close and permanent union of the 
States; and in the Constitutional Convention, and 
in securing the adoption of the Constitution and 
expounding what it meant, he rendered services 
even greater than he rendered as a member of the 
Continental Congress, which declared our inde 
pendence; for it was the success of the makers 
and preservers of the Union which justified our 
independence. 

He believed in the people with the faith of 
Abraham Lincoln; and coupled with his faith in 
the people he had what most of the men who in 
this generation believed in the people did not have ; 
that is, the courage to recognize the fact that faith 
in the people amounted to nothing unless the rep 
resentatives of the people assembled together in 
the National Government were given full and com 
plete power to work on behalf of the people. He 
developed even before Marshall the doctrine 
(absolutely essential not merely to the efficiency but to 
the existence of this Nation) that an inherent power 
rested in the Nation, outside of the enumerated 
powers conferred upon it by the Constitution, in all 
cases where the object involved was beyond the 
power of the several States and was a power ordi 
narily exercised by sovereign nations. 

In a remarkable letter in which he advocated set 
ting forth in early and clear fashion the powers of 
the National Government, he laid down the propo 
sition that it should be made clear that there were 
neither vacancies nor interferences between the 
limits of State and national jurisdiction, and that 
both jurisdictions together composed only one uni 
form and comprehensive system of government and 
laws; that is, whenever the States can not act, be 
cause the need to be met is not one of merely a 
single locality, then the National Government, rep 
resenting all the people, should have complete 
power to act. It was in the spirit of Wilson that 
Washington, and Washington s lieutenant, Hamil 
ton, acted; and it was in the same spirit that Mar 
shall construed the law. 

It is only by acting in this spirit that the national 
judges, legislators, and executives can give a satis 
factory solution of the great question of the present 
day the question of providing on behalf of the 
sovereign people the means which will enable the 
people in effective form to assert their sovereignty 
over the immense corporations of the day. Certain 
judicial decisions have done just what Wilson 
feared; they have, as a matter of fact, left vacan 
cies, left blanks between the limits of possible State 
jurisdiction and the limits of actual national juris 
diction over the control of the great business cor 
porations. It is the narrow construction of the 
powers of the National Government which in our 
democracy has proved the chief means of limiting 
the national power to cut out abuses, and which is 
now the chief bulwark of those great moneyed in 
terests which oppose and dread any attempt to 
place them under efficient governmental control. 

Many legislative actions and many judicial deci 
sions which I am confident time will show to have 
been erroneous and a damage to the country would 
have been avoided if our legislators and jurists had 
approached the matter of enacting and construing 
the laws of the land in the spirit of your great 
Pennsylvanian, Justice Wilson in the spirit of Mar 
shall and of Washington. Such decisions put us 
at a great disadvantage in the battle for industrial 
order as against the present industrial chaos. If 
we interpret the Constitution in narrow instead of 
broad fashion, if we forsake the principles of Wash 
ington, Marshall, Wilson, and Hamilton, we as a 
people will render ourselves impotent to deal with 
any abuses which may be committed by the men 
who have accumulated the enormous fortunes of 
to-day, and who use these fortunes in still vaster 
corporate form in business. 

The legislative or judicial actions and decisions 
of which I complain, be it remembered, do not 
really leave to the States power to deal with cor 
porate wealth in business. Actual experience has 
shown that the States are wholly powerless to deal 
with this subject; and any action or decision that 
deprives the Nation of the power to deal with it, 
simply results in leaving the corporations abso 
lutely free to work without any effective super 
vision whatever; and such a course is fraught with 
untold danger to the future of our whole system of 
government, and, indeed, to our whole civilization. 

All honest men must abhor and reprobate any 
effort to excite hostility to men of wealth as such. 
We should do all we can to encourage thrift and 
business energy, to put a premium upon the con 
duct of the man who honestly earns his livelihood 
and more than his livelihood, and who honestly 
uses the money he has earned. But it is our clear 
duty to see, in the interest of the people, that there 
is adequate supervision and control over the busi 
ness use of the swollen fortunes of to-day, and also 
wisely to determine the conditions upon which these 
fortunes are to be transmitted and the percentage 
that they shall pay to the Government whose pro 
tecting arm alone enables them to exist. Only the 
Nation can do this work. To relegate it to the 
States is a farce, and is simply another way of 
saying that it shall not be done at all. 

Under a wise and farseeing interpretation of 
the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, 
I maintain that the National Government should 
have complete power to deal with all of this wealth 
which in any way goes into the commerce between 
the States and practically all of it that is em 
ployed in the great corporations does thus go in. 
The national legislators should most scrupulously 
avoid any demagogic legislation about the business 
use of this wealth, and should realize that it would 
be better to have no legislation at all than legisla 
tion couched either in a vindictive spirit of hatred 
toward men of wealth or else drawn with the reck 
lessness of impracticable visionaries. But, on the 
other hand, it shall and must ultimately be under 
stood that the United States Government, on be 
half of the people of the United States, has and is 
to exercise the power of supervision and control 
over the business use of this wealth in the first 
place, over all the work of the common carriers of 
the Nation, and in the next place over the work of 
all the great corporations which directly or indi 
rectly do any interstate business whatever and 
this includes almost all of the great corporations. 

During the last few years the National Govern 
ment has taken very long strides in the direction of 
exercising and securing this adequate control over 
the great corporations, and it was under the leader 
ship of one of the most honored public men in our 
country, one of Pennsylvania s most eminent sons 
the present Senator, and then Attorney-General, 
Knox that the new departure was begun. Events 
have moved fast during the last five years, and it is 
curious to look back at the extreme bitterness which 
not merely the spokesmen and representatives of 
organized wealth, but many most excellent conser 
vative people then felt as to the action of Mr. 
Knox and of the Administration. 

Many of the greatest financiers of this country 
were certain that Mr. Knox s Northern Securities 
suit, if won, would plunge us into the worst panic 
we had ever seen. They denounced as incitement 
to anarchy, as an apology for socialism, the advo 
cacy of policies that either have now become law 
or are in fair way of becoming law; and yet these 
same policies, so far from representing either an 
archy or socialism, were in reality the antidotes to 
anarchy, the antidotes to socialism. To exercise a 
constantly increasing and constantly more efficient 
supervision and control over the great common 
carriers of the country prevents all necessity for 
seriously considering such a project as the Govern 
ment ownership of railroads a policy which would 
be evil in its results from every standpoint. 

A similar extension of the national power to 
oversee and secure correct behavior in the manage 
ment of all great corporations engaged in interstate 
business will in similar fashion render far more 
stable the present system by doing away with those 
grave abuses which are not only evil in themselves 
but are also evil because they furnish an excuse for 
agitators to inflame well-meaning people against 
all forms of property, and to commit the country 
to schemes of wild, would-be remedy which would 
work infinitely more harm than the disease itself. 
The Government ought not to conduct the busi 
ness of the country; but it ought to regulate it so 
that it shall be conducted in the interest of the 
public. 

Perhaps the best justification of the course which 
in the National Government we have been pursuing 
in the past few years, and which we intend steadily 
and progressively to pursue in the future, is that it 
is condemned with almost equal rancor alike by the 
reactionaries the Bourbons on one side, and by 
the wild apostles of unrest on the other. The reac 
tionary is bitterly angry because we have deprived 
him of that portion of his power which he misuses 
to the public hurt; the agitator is angered for 
various reasons, including among others the fact that 
by remedying the abuses we have deprived him of 
the fulcrum of real grievance, which alone renders 
the lever of irrational agitation formidable. 

We have actually accomplished much. But we 
have not accomplished all, nor anything like all, 
that we feel must be accomplished. We shall not 
halt; we shall steadily follow the path we have 
marked out, executing the laws we have succeeded 
in putting upon the statute books with absolute im 
partiality as between man and man, and unresting 
in our endeavor to strengthen and supplement these 
by further laws which shall enable us in more effi 
cient and more summary fashion to achieve the ends 
we have in view. 

During the last few years Congress has had to 
deal with such vitally important questions as pro 
viding for the building of the Panama Canal, in 
augurating the vast system of national irrigation 
in the States of the Great Plains and the Rocky 
Mountains, providing for a Pacific cable, upbuild 
ing the navy, and so forth. Yet in addition to 
these tasks, some of which are of stupendous 
importance, Congress has taken giant strides 
along the path of Government regulation and 
control of corporations; the interstate commerce 
law has been made effective in radical and far- 
reaching fashion, rebates have been stopped, a pure- 
food law has been passed, proper supervision of the 
meat-packing business provided, and the Bureau 
of Corporations established a bureau which has 
already done great good, and which can and should 
be given a constantly increasing functional power. 


The work of legislation has been no more im 
portant than the work done by the Department of 
Justice in executing the laws, not only against 
corporations and individuals who have broken the 
anti-trust or interstate commerce law, but against 
those who have been engaged in land frauds. 
Scores of suits, civil and criminal, have been suc 
cessfully undertaken against offenders of all kinds 
many of them against the most formidable and 
wealthy combinations in the land ; in some the com 
binations have been dissolved, in some heavy fines 
have been imposed, in several cases the chief 
offenders have been imprisoned. 

It behooves us Americans to look ahead and plan 
out the right kind of a civilization, as that which 
we intend to develop from these wonderful new 
conditions of vast industrial growth. It must not 
be, it shall not be, the civilization of a mere 
plutocracy, a banking-house, Wall-Street-syndicate 
civilization; nor yet can there be submission to 
class hatred, to rancor, brutality, and mob vio 
lence, for that would mean the end of all civiliza 
tion. Increased powers are susceptible of abuse as 
well as use; never before have the opportunities 
for selfishness been so great, nor the results of 
selfishness so appalling; for in communities where 
everything is organized on a merely selfish com 
mercial basis, such selfishness, if unchecked, may 
transform the great forces of the new epoch into 
powers of destruction hitherto unequaled. 

We need to check the forces of greed, to ensure 
just treatment alike of capital and of labor, and of 
the general public, to prevent any man, rich or poor, 
from doing or receiving wrong, whether this wrong 
be one of cunning or of violence. Much can be 
done by wise legislation and by resolute enforce 
ment of the law. But still more must be done by 
steady training of the individual citizen, in con 
science and character, until he grows to abhor cor 
ruption and greed and tyranny and brutality and 
to prize justice and fair dealing. 

The men who are to do the work of the new 
epoch must be trained so as to have a sturdy self- 
respect, a power of sturdy insistence on their own 
rights, and with it a proud and generous recogni 
tion of their duties, a sense of honorable obligation 
to their fellows, which will bind them, as by bands 
of steel, to refrain in their daily work at home or 
in their business from doing aught to any man 
which can not be blazoned under the noonday sun.