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UNION LEAGUE CLUB 
 CHICAGO 
 
 EXERCISES IN COnA\EA\ORATION 
 
 or THE 
 
 BIRTriDAYorWASMlNGTON 
 
 EEBRUARY 22. 1900 
 
 •To inculcate a higher appreciation of the value and sacred obligations of 
 American citizenship." — Articles of Association. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 Metcalf Stationery Co. 
 
 Printers 
 
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 ' I 'HE exercises of February 22, 1900, under the auspices of 
 the Union League Club of Chicago, in commemoration 
 of the birthday of Washington, were : 
 
 In the morning, celebrations at forty-seven of the Chicago 
 Public Schools, presided over and addressed by members of the 
 Club. 
 
 Music was in charge of the music teachers of the Chicago 
 Public Schools. • 
 
 In the afternoon. Address at the Auditorium, by the Hon. 
 Jacob Gould Schurman, before the members of the Club and 
 their invited guests. 
 
 In the evening, banquet and speeches in the dining-room of 
 the Club House. 
 
UNION LEAGUE CLUB 
 CELEBRATION OF ^VASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY. 
 
 The Auditorium — Three o'clock. 
 
 'Star Spangled Banner" - - - - . The Audience 
 
 Invocation, - - - - Rev. William J. McCaughan 
 
 *Red White and Blue," . . . . The Audience 
 
 Introductory Remarks, The President of the Union League Club 
 
 Oration, "Expansion" - - Hon. Jacob Gould Schurman 
 
 'America" - - - - - - - The Audience 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/exercisesincommeOOuniorich 
 
EXERCISES AT THE AUDITORIUM. 
 
 The usual celebration was held in the Auditorium in the 
 afternoon. The building was filled long before the time set for 
 the commencement, and great enthusiasm was displaf^ed. 
 
 After an organ solo by Professor Harrison M. Wild, the 
 Hyde Park Young Ladies' Glee Club sang ''The Star-Spangled 
 Banner," the audience joining heartily in the chorus. 
 
 The chaplain of the day, the Rev. WilHam J. McCaughan, 
 then offered the following prayer, the audience remaining 
 standing. 
 
 '*God over all ; blessed forever ; we come to Thee with 
 thanksgiving; we praise Thy great name for all Thy goodness 
 and Thy love. We thank Thee for the memory of the brave 
 and true who have lived and loved and fought and died for honor 
 and righteousness. We pray Thee to grant that the recollection 
 of their actions may inspire us to do better than we have done. 
 We pray for this land. Grant Thy blessing upon the president 
 of these United States. Surround him with counsellors wise and 
 patriotic, so that the affairs of this great commonwealth may 
 be directed for the honor of Thy name and for the good of this 
 world. And all we ask is in Christ's name. Amen.'! 
 
 After 'The Red, VVhite and Blue" had been sung by the 
 entire audience, led by the glee club, the speaker of the day was 
 introduced by President Eugene Gary in the following words : 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT GARY 
 AT THE AUDITORIUM, FEB. 22, 1900. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: We are assembled here, the mem- 
 bers and guests of the Union League Club, to do homage to the 
 memory of Washington and to celebrate the day which gave 
 him birth. It is needless to dispute with others as to his rank 
 in minor things. We know that for us and for our country his 
 
 7 
 
is the greatest name that Hves ; that in the grand struggle and 
 march for freedom he was humanity's greatest leader, and that 
 through us as a nation he gave to the world its chiefest example 
 of republican self-government. And now that his greatness is 
 acknowledged and his praises sung the world round, our hearts 
 swell with pride and gratitude that he is ours ; our countryman ; 
 our great American ; our Washington. Not the safe and in- 
 vincible General merely, not the wise first President, but George 
 Washington, the sublime personality, greatest seen when all 
 props and scaflfoldings of rank and station are torn away. 
 
 Appreciating the value of national holidays and the celebra- 
 tion of great national events and characters in keeping alive 
 and stimulating a national spirit, without which there can be 
 little sense or sentiment of patriotism, the Union League Club 
 has adopted Washington's birthday for annual celebration, as 
 being the day best suited to its purpose as a non-partisan and 
 purely patriotic body in organization and aim. For to this 
 shrine all the people may bring their offerings of devotion with- 
 out distinction of race or creed or party. Accordingly on each 
 recurring 22d of February the members of the Club, their guests 
 and friends, come together here to join in celebrating the day 
 with fitting ceremonies and to listen to an oration or address 
 from some gentleman of distinction, generally eminent for 
 learning and public service, on some theme of national interest 
 suited to the occasion. 
 
 But the zeal and efforts of the Club do not end here. Appre- 
 ciating that the best soil for the planting of useful seed is in the 
 minds of the children, it invades the schools of our city with 
 speakers and flags and music — has invaded some forty or fifty 
 of them to-day — and with patriotic exercises, speeches and songs 
 seeks to make the day so impressive, in fact exciting, that it 
 shall dwell forever a pleasant memory in the minds of the chil- 
 dren and be all through their lives a constant stimulant and 
 inspiration of love of country and patriotic ardor. This is the 
 'work of the Union League Club on the 226. of February. If 
 it had no other claim, thisVould be sufficient warrant for its 
 existence and for your approval. But aside from this and in all 
 proper ways it seeks to be a constant, helpful and patriotic factor 
 in the life and affairs of our city and nation. 
 
 8 
 
To address us to-day we are so fortunate as to have a gentle- 
 man distinguished not only for learning but for eminent public 
 service recently rendered, the honored president of Cornell Uni- 
 versity and lately a Commissioner from this government to the 
 Philippine Islands. His theme will be one on which instruc- 
 tion is both needful and timely. Ladies and gentlemen, I have 
 the honor to introduce President Schurman, who will now ad- 
 dress you. 
 
 EXPANSION. 
 ADDRESS OF HON. JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : It is now one hundred years since 
 George Washington, whose birthday is. the occasion of our 
 assemblage, exchanging time for eternity, closed his eyes upon 
 a world which had never entertained a nobler man, a braver 
 general, or a wiser statesman. In less than the three-score and 
 ten years alloted to human existence — from February 22, 1732, 
 to December 14, 1799 — he had lived a life and wrought a work 
 which will cover his name with glory inextinguishable so long 
 as this planet retains a memory for the heroic achievements of 
 its most exalted sons. Indeed Washington has, as it were, 
 incorporated himself into our continent; not only is it impossi- 
 ble to dissociate his name from America, but his high and serene 
 spirit seems to preside over our national destinies. In his teach- 
 ings and example, too, we have an invaluable and imperishable 
 possession. Though 
 
 "the great world spin forever 
 Down the ringing grooves of change," 
 we feel that Washington's ideas of liberty, justice, and national 
 righteousness must live undimmed and immutable in the hearts 
 of every generation of Americans. 
 
 I trust there is no impropriety in devoting this hour of Wash- 
 ington's birthday to reflections upon that larger world into which 
 a century's expansion has carried us. Bigness, it is true, is not 
 greatness, and prosperity is not virtue, nor is the acquisition of 
 territory growth in patriotism ; but there is no incompatibility 
 between these ends ; indeed the greatest expansionist of the last 
 century was George Washington himself. 
 
 Scientists tell us of the reversion of organic beings, after the 
 
 9 
 
lapse of generations, to the form or habits of an earUer type. If 
 this law of biology holds good in politics, as I believe it does, 
 then our present Chief Magistrate in his policy of expansion 
 would seem to have been possessed by the spirit of Washington, 
 who extended the national domain from the Atlantic to the Mis- 
 sissippi, or of Jefferson, who, impelled by the same imperious 
 instinct, trampled under foot his dearest political theories and 
 secured for the Union that vast territory beyond the Mississippi 
 where the flag now waves over the prosperous and intelligent 
 citizens of a dozen populous states — states whose trade and 
 wealth converging on the shores of this lake, have made possible 
 the greatest miracle on the American continent : the rapid-rising, 
 fast-growing, immense, rushing, roaring, powerful, and mag- 
 nificent city of Chicago. 
 
 Chicago is the index of the modern world. It is the most 
 conspicuous example and the most concentrated abstract of that 
 expansive movement which characterizes the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. With less than 30,000 people here in 1850, you had in 
 1870 nearly 300,000, and in 1890 over a million. I shall not 
 venture to conjecture the population at the present time, but I 
 suppose the largest estimates scarcely exceed the actual num- 
 bers, or if they do, so great and rapid is your increase that while 
 the investigation continues the exaggeration ends. Nor is it a 
 growth in population only; there has been a corresponding 
 augmentation of wealth attended by an improvement in the 
 general well-being, an extension and elevation of popular educa- 
 tion, and an unprecedented multiplication and development of 
 all those objects and institutions which mark and express the 
 highest civilization. 
 
 Chicago is the product of the nineteenth century. And if 
 this latest birth of time is an amazing and unparalleled phe- 
 nomenon, so also is the epoch which produced it. This cen- 
 tury is unlike all the centuries that have gone before. Our 
 most distinguished scientist has christened it "the wonderful 
 century." And so indeed it is, not merely in the free hyperbole 
 of popular speech, but in the severe exactitude of scientific 
 description. For a miracle is a departure from established ways, 
 and the whole history of mankind shows nothing that could 
 have augured the intellectual and material achievements of the 
 last three generations. How shall I describe them? What is 
 
 10 
 
the token of this wonderful century? I say, in a word, expan- 
 sion — a boundless extension of human knowledge and a vast 
 enlargement of human power. In this century, for the first time, 
 the might of intellect has given man dominion over the forces 
 of nature. That kingdom of man which Bacon foretold and 
 Shakespeare pictured in immortal verse has come. It is Irere. 
 Man is no longer the sport of nature but her master. With the 
 magic wand of science he has subdued air, fire, water, steam, and 
 electricity ; and those titanic forces, like obedient servants, now 
 wait upon him, serve him, and do his bidding. The miracle of 
 the nineteenth century is the systematic harnessing of all the 
 powers of nature to do the will of man. And for this stupen- 
 dous achievement you will not find an equivalent even in the 
 combined arts and sciences of all the preceding centuries though 
 you go back to the dawn of history or perhaps even to the stone 
 age itself. The nineteenth century is the mountain of transfig- 
 uration for progressive humanity. 
 
 You will not expect me, and indeed I confess I am not com- 
 petent, to describe the great scientific discoveries which have 
 changed the face of modern life and civilization. Varied and 
 significant as they are, however, they may all be reduced to a 
 dozen fundamental principles like the law of the conservation of 
 energy, the doctrine of organic evolution, and the germ theory 
 of zymotic diseases. These principles, which are the work of the 
 nineteenth century, excel both in number and importance the 
 scientific discoveries of all preceding ages. I mean that the 
 last three generations have learned more about the universe in 
 which we live than all the earlier -generations of mankind. Why 
 the modern astronomer, by means of spectrum analysis, takes 
 the heat and reads the elements of the stars, and even ascertains 
 the existence and determines the rate of motion of stellar bodies 
 which no eye has seen and no telescope can reveal ; and, extend- 
 ing liis explorations through the sublime abysses of infinite 
 space, demonstrates that our earth is but a fraction of one out of 
 at least 75,000,000 worlds ! 
 
 And then what marvelous inventions this century has origi- 
 nated ! The Roentgen rays have rendered opaque objects trans- 
 parent. The photograph catches and preserves forms and colors 
 as the phonograph does sounds. Primitive modes of producing 
 and utilizing artificial light remained to the close of the 
 
 11 
 
eighteenth century ; and Hghting by means of lamps with chim- 
 neys, then by gas, and more recently by electricity, renders the 
 nineteenth century, which made those new departures, more fruit- 
 ful in the field of domestic and public illumination than the whole 
 preceding period since fire was first taken into the service of 
 mankind. And what shall I say of the telegraph and the tele- 
 phone, the one transmitting words and the other speech with the 
 rapidity of lightning? In the eighteenth century the letter or 
 the messenger was the only medium of communication with 
 persons at a distance, as it had been through all the centuries 
 since picture-writing or hieroglyphics were first invented. 
 Naturally intercourse w^as slow^ precarious, infrequent, and 
 difficult. But the telegraph and telephone have annihilated dis- 
 tance, made the round globe a whispering gallery, and brought 
 all that dwell upon it into communication with one another. 
 
 The creation of these marvelous methods of communication 
 with our fellow-men all over the world has been accompanied by 
 a similar revolution in methods of locomotion and transporta- 
 tion. Up to this century men or animals had been the carriers 
 of travelers and of goods since the earliest historic and even pre- 
 historic times. And the chariot in which the Bible tells us 
 Pharaoh made Joseph ride, or the chariot in which, according 
 to Homer, Telemachus traveled from Pylos to Sparta was not 
 essentially different from the coach of George Washington. 
 Traveling was not swifter or more convenient in the eighteenth 
 century than it was in the first, when, indeed, the Roman had 
 the advantage of better roads. But what a revolution the nine- 
 teenth century has effected by means of the railway and steam 
 locomc^t^^re I Instead of carrvinsf a few passeng^ers at a maximum 
 speed of ten or twelve miles an hour we now carry hundreds of 
 passengers and tons of goods for unlimited distances at a speed 
 of fifty or sixty miles an hour — and that too with economy, 
 safety, and punctuality. A similar result has been produced by 
 the use of steam for the propulsion of vessels, especially since 
 the ocean voyage of the "Great Western" in 1838. Both on 
 sea and land the methods of locomotion and transportation 
 which had been used for thousands of years have been, not 
 merely modified, but completely revolutionized by the astound- 
 ing inventions and appliances of the nineteenth century. And 
 nowhere have these mechanical developments been fuller and 
 
 12 
 
richer, nowhere have the resuhs of them been more astound- 
 ing, than in the United States. Railroads have come into exist- 
 ence since 1830; in 1849 there were over 7,000 miles in operation 
 in this country, in 1879 nearly 87,000, and in 1899 not less than 
 187,000. This is a greater railroad mileage than thai of_^Eu- 
 rope, and the business done is not less, though our population 
 is only one-fifth of tne European. The growth of our shipping- 
 interests is scarcely less remarkable. The tonnage cleared at 
 all our ports, both sail and steam, aggregated in 1859 scarcely 
 5,000,000; whereas in 1879 it had risen to 13,600,000, and in 
 1899 to over 26,000,000, The tonnage of vessels passing through 
 the Sault Ste. Marie canal rose from 5,130,000 in 1888 to 18,622,- 
 
 000 in 1898, which is considerably greater than the combined 
 tonnage of the Suez, North Sea and Manchester canals for the 
 same year. 
 
 Expansion, I have said, is the characteristic note of the nine- 
 teenth century. It has been a century of expanding knowledge, 
 a century of abounding invention, a century of amazing increase 
 in the means of communication and transportation. 
 
 But marvelous as are these phases of intellectual and material 
 progress which have their origin in the nineteenth century, 
 
 1 suppose that modern life and civilization owe a still larger 
 debt to the wonderful development during the same period of all 
 forms of labor-saving machinery, which it was the glory of the 
 eighteenth century to have invented and in simple ways to have 
 applied. The cotton industry has been revolutionized by the 
 inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Whitney, and their suc- 
 cessors. In 1 79 1 the world produced a milHon bales of cotton, 
 of which only about 5,000 were raised in the United States. In 
 1799 this country produced 89,000 bales; in 1879 over 5,000,000, 
 and in 1899 about 11,500,000. At the beginning of the century 
 our cotton product was an infinitesimal fraction of the world's 
 total supply; at the close of the century we are raising nine- 
 tenths of the cottoii of the world. And the number of our spin- 
 dles has increased from 4,000 in 1805 to nearly 18,000,000 at the 
 present time. 
 
 Our industrial development, however, rests primarily on 
 iron and steel. And nothing is more remarkable than the im- 
 provements which this century has witnessed in the methods of 
 producing them. These improvements, which are associated 
 
 13 
 
with the names of Cort, Neilson, Siemens, and especially Besse- 
 mer, culminated in the method of converting pig iron and iron 
 ore into steel by means of the blast furnace without resort to 
 the cumbersome intermediate processes which had formerly 
 been indispensable. Steel can now be produced as cheaply as 
 iron was formerly; and labor-saving machinery is thus made 
 possible for every branch of manufacture, trade, and agriculture. 
 As a consequence the power of production has been enormously 
 increased. The universal cry for new markets is a direct result 
 of our increased control over the resources of nature through 
 the instrumentalities which iron and steel in particular supply. 
 The iron and steel business is therefore at once the heart and 
 the pulse of modern trade and commerce. And nowhere has 
 there been a more surprising expansion. Our production of 
 pig iron rose from 2,741,000 tons in 1879 to 7,600,000 in 1889, 
 and touched the enormous tigure uf 13,640,000 tons, which was 
 valued at $149,734,000, in 1899. During the same two decades 
 the production of iron ore increased from about 7,000,000 tons 
 a year to over 25,000,000 (with a value of over $50,000,000). Or, 
 to drop figures, let me say that we are today making more than 
 one-third of the world's iron and steel. This helps to explain 
 the enormous increase observable in the output of bituminous 
 coal, which in 1869 aggregated 17,664,000 tons, but which in 
 1899 was nearly ten times as much, namely, 170,410,000 tons. 
 
 These facts show the industrial supremacy of the United 
 States. Our agricultural pre-eminence is an old story, and we 
 still grow one-fifth of the world's wheat and seven-eighths of its 
 corn. But the rising, the overwhelming, tide of our manufac- 
 tures is a comparatively new phenomenon. I will not trouble 
 you with figures. Let me merely say that in 1870 our manu- 
 factures were about equal to the manufactures of Great Britain ; 
 and now they are equal to those of Great Britain, France, and 
 Germany combined. A few years ago the cry was for the home 
 market; but in addition to the home market we now need the 
 markets of the world. Science, invention, and manufacturing 
 have all expanded together. Our total exports of all kinds of 
 domestic merchandise were valued at $730,000,000 in 1889; in 
 1899 they were $1,204,000,000. But the rate of increase of our 
 exports of manufactures was much greater; for they rose from 
 $139,000,000 in 1889 to $339,000,000 in 1899, of which an advance 
 
 14 
 
from $21,000,000 to $94,000,000 was due to the enormous 
 increase in the exports of manufactures of iron and steel. I 
 cannot speak (for there is not time) of copper and its products, 
 the exports of which have increased from $3,800,000 in 1888 to 
 $32,200,000 in 1898; or of leather and its products, whose export 
 values were $9,500,000 in 1888 and $21,100,000 in 1898; or of 
 agricnitural implements, locomotives, and fertilizers, the value 
 of whose exports have trebled during the same decade. Eut I 
 must say a word regarding another important product. We now 
 furnish nearly half of the world's supply of crude petroleum and 
 two-thirds of its refined illuminating oil. Since the reorganiza- 
 tion of the Standard Oil Company in 1872 the aggregate value 
 of the exports of petroleum up to 1898 was $1,246,848,000. This 
 enormous expansion of trade has been due to science, to in- 
 vention, to labor, to brains, but not less to the efficacy of com- 
 bined capital and consolidated management, which is revolu- 
 tiuinzing tiie producing and distributing business of the closing 
 years of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The accumulated capital of the country beggars all descrip- 
 tion. It has more than trebled since 1870; and it is now increas- 
 ing at the rate of $2,000,000,000 a year. This means a greatly 
 accelerated activity and a prodigious expansion in production 
 and distribution. An indication of the rapidly swelling tide of 
 business is furnished by the transactions of the New York Clear- 
 ing House, whose clearings in 1889 aggregated $37,606,000,000 
 and in 1899 not less than $60,682,000,000. 
 
 To such unparalleled expansion in finance, in manufacturing, 
 in agriculture have we attained at the close of this wonderful 
 century. I beg the practical man to remember that it is due 
 primarily to those great discoveries regarding the forces and 
 laws of nature by which the men of the nineteenth century have 
 eclipsed the aggregate scientific achievements of all the preced- 
 ing generations of mankind. I do not, of course, forget that 
 capital, skill, and labor have been co-operating causes in produc- 
 ing this expansion, which every day gathers fresh strength. 
 The momentum it has already acquired is carrying us forward 
 at an incredible velocity. To slacken the speed or contract the 
 volume of this movement would be, not only to surrender the 
 supremacy which we have achieved in material civilization, or 
 not merely to reduce the profits on invested capital ; it would be 
 
 15 
 
something still more disastrous, it would involve the diminution 
 of wages and the lowering of the standard of living of the Ameri- 
 can laborer, who is the representative of the American people. 
 Such an issue must be averted at all hazards. And just here 
 comes the problem of problems for our statesmen, our thinkers, 
 and our great captains of industry. Our power of production 
 having outrun our capacity to consume and being all the time 
 on the increase, and the old markets of the world being glutted 
 by the products of all civilized nations, what new outlets are 
 there for our waxing productivity, what new fields for the recep- 
 tion of the surplus commodities we multiply so rapidly and at a 
 constantly declining cost? This is the question put to the 
 American people by the Sphinx of the twentieth century. And 
 the life of the nation in no small degree depends on the answer. 
 It is true that the markets of the world are limited. And I 
 sometimes speculate how Yankee inventiveness is to find an 
 outlet when the economic wants of all nations are satisfied. For 
 with our present command of nature's forces and resources our 
 power of production is of almost infinite extent. Perhaps we 
 shall in the future manufacture for some other world and send 
 our commodities through the air by means of trackless cars. 
 But at present we are restricted to this Httle planet. And here 
 the only peoples who have yet reached the manufacturing stage, 
 the only peoples who do not compete with us in their own rnar- 
 kets, are the vast populations of South America, Africa, and 
 especially of Asia. In consequence of circumstances which I 
 shall not stop to describe, both Great Britain and Germany have 
 got ahead of us in the markets of South America ; but if our 
 manufacturers will follow foreign example in adapting their 
 'products to local tastes and needs, I see no obstacle in the way 
 of our securing a fair share — and that will be the lion's share — 
 of that hitherto undeveloped and neglected business. As to 
 Africa the case is dififerent. We have allowed — in my judg- 
 ment it was a great mistake — but in our blind idolatry of what 
 was called, though erroneously, the Monroe doctrine, in our 
 devotion to the stay-at-home policy of the eighteenth century, 
 in our intense desire to avoid all international obligations, we 
 have allowed the great nations of Europe to partition out Africa 
 among themselves and exclude American products by means of 
 discriminating tariffs devised to secure for their own manufac- 
 
 16 
 
turers a monopoly of the new markets. I say we stood uncon- 
 cernedly by and remained silent while those vast possibilities 
 of expanding trade were one by one extinguished. For justi- 
 fication we cited some abstract theory of non-intervention in the 
 affairs of the Old World; and no one could pretend that Africa 
 was in our hemisphere ! Our blunder was in our failure to rec- 
 ognize that science and invention and steam and electricity 
 have, since the days of Washington and Jefferson, made the 
 whole world one, and every part of it, for commercial purposes, 
 a possible province of the United States. 
 
 But the psychological moment has passed. In Africa we 
 shall have only such trading rights and privileges as the Euro- 
 pean overlords may be graciously pleased to vouchsafe us. Hap- 
 pily Asia remained — Asia, the largest, richest, and most popu- 
 lous of the unoccupied markets of the world. All eyes were on 
 China, with its splendid, inexhaustible, and undeveloped natural 
 resources and its 400,000,000 people strangely stirring with a 
 new and mighty life. England made a great effort to keep its 
 trade doors open, but she failed. x\nd Englishmen in the East, 
 as I well recall from conversations with them in Shanghai, Can- 
 ton, and Hong Kong, gave way to discouragement, which almost 
 verged on despair. With France on the south, Germany on the 
 east, and the Russian bear's paw^ over all the north, the inde- 
 pendence and territorial integrity of China trembled in the bal- 
 ance ; yet if her sovereignty collapsed, if those European powers 
 divided up and appropriated that vast empire, their several an- 
 nexations would have been closed to American trade and 
 commerce. 
 
 That this disaster to our industries has been averted you owe 
 to the prescience, wisdom, and skill df the statesman who to-day 
 worthily fills the chair of Washington. Thanks to the brilliant 
 and truly memorable diplomacy of the present administration 
 the great nations of Europe have agreed — and agreed in writing 
 — that whatever political or territorial policies they may pursue 
 in China, the open door to trade, the equal commercial rights 
 and privileges we now enjoy with them, shall remain intact and 
 inviolable. And we had scarcely recovered from our surprise 
 and admiration over this high achievement of American diplo- 
 macy when we were once more smitten with astonishment at 
 the success of the administration's negotiations for the construc- 
 
 17 
 
tion of an interoceanic canal under American control. Here is 
 the long-desired highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
 needed more than ever since the Pacific is now destined to be, 
 through the mingling of Occident and Orient under the new 
 agency of the United States the theatre of the next great act 
 in the divine drama of the life and development of humanity. 
 
 I said a little while ago that the expansion of American 
 industries and capital called for new markets in another world. 
 And, lo, the teeming populations of the Orient liav-e been secured 
 as permanent customers ! Let us enter in and possess this vast 
 commercial estate. But you must study the needs, the senti- 
 ments, and the prejudices of the Oriental and give him exactly 
 what he has been accustomed to and what he wants. Afterward 
 you may try new departures ; once established in his markets 
 you may venture with novelties to create new wants ; but at the 
 outset you must take him as he is and cater to his tastes, for in 
 no other way will you secure his trade. Considering the pre- 
 eminence of our natural resources and the superiority of our 
 skill and labor, as well as the advantage of our proximity to 
 Asia — for China is just across the "pond" at our back door, 
 which may one day become our front door — I believe that no 
 one has painted in too roseate hues the possibilities of commer- 
 cial expansion in the Orient. Here is, as it were, a foreor- 
 dained field for the surplus products of your teeming industries. 
 And it opened up at the very time when the old limits were 
 beginning to prove oppressive. 
 
 What was the secret of our success in compelling European 
 nations to stand by the policy of the open door in China? Some 
 powerful cause there certainly was; for England had failed in 
 a similar attempt only two or three years ago. We should not 
 have succeeded at that time either; indeed we should not have 
 essayed the task; and had any political leader suggested it he 
 might have been denounced as a renegade to the Monroe doc- 
 trine. But in the short space of two years the political horizon 
 of the American people has undergone an immense expansion ; 
 the astonished nations have seen us become an Asiatic power. 
 American diplomacy triumphed in China because the American 
 flag waved in the Philippines. That commercial expansion 
 which the marvelous growth of your capital and industries had 
 rendered indispensable to the continued vitality of the nation 
 
 18 
 
was heralded by the roar of Dewey's guns, asserted by the bril- 
 liant feats of your armies under Otis, MacArthur, and the heroic 
 Lawton, and finally established and secured by an international 
 agreement which will render this administration illustrious in 
 all the annals of American diplomacy. 
 
 We waged a war — a justifiable and righteous war if ever 
 there was one in history — for the liberation of Cuba from the 
 yoke of Spanish oppression. And into our reluctant lap the 
 hand of destiny dropped the Philippines ! Saul went out to seek 
 his father's asses and found a kingdom. It was our aim to 
 drive an efifete European nation from the American continent; 
 the unavoidable result was to make us an Asiatic power. 
 
 I sometimes think that the greatest events in history were 
 neither intended nor desired by man. 
 
 ''There is a divinity that shapes our ends 
 Rough hew them as we will." 
 
 The most potent factor in the making of this Republic was 
 the acquisition of the trans-Mississippi territory. Yet Jeflfer- 
 son did not want it ; his agents in Paris apologized for taking it : 
 the constraining force was the necessity of Napoleon. I sup- 
 pose England's greatest, certainly her most striking, achieve- 
 ment is the conquest of India. Yet we have the word of Seeley 
 for it that nothing great done by Englishmen was ever done so 
 blindly, so unintentionally, so accidentally. In reading the his- 
 tory of the Roman Empire I cannot resist the conviction that 
 circumstances — not infrequently circumstances of a physical 
 character — had as much to do with the rearing of that vast and 
 imposing fabric as the policies of Roman statesmen or the vic- 
 tories of Roman generals. 
 
 I should be the last man alive to belittle the freedom of the 
 human will. I believe it is a divine and truly creative power in 
 man. But the circle of freedom is small, and it is beset at every 
 point by the pressure of necessity. You are free to do a particu- 
 lar act or to forbear; but if you do it, the forces of nature or 
 society sweep it beyond your control and beget results which 
 perhaps you particularly deprecate. The same law is true of the 
 doings of nations. Two years ago our government was free 
 to hold in leash or to let loose the dogs of war ; but when once 
 a decision was reached and the fateful word spoken, forces and 
 circumstances beyond the reach of man's will largely determined 
 
 19 
 
the course of the conflict and the nature of the final issue. 
 
 You must test men and nations, not by their capacity to con- 
 trol the forces of the world, but by the courage with which they 
 face their destinies. The Philippines came to us as an unavoid- 
 able result of the war with Spain ; we have accepted them, and, 
 with the aid of Providence, we propose to discharge our respon- 
 sibilities for them. We never dreamed of territorial expansion 
 when the war began; we did not desire it when the war closed; 
 but both the well-being of the Filipinos and the peace of the 
 world forbade our leaving the Archipelago a derelict in those 
 eastern waters, the sport of the typhoons and earthquakes of 
 internal and external politics, and imperiously demanded that 
 where Dewey had planted our flag there it should remain — the 
 pledge and emblem of peace, order, prosperity, and liberty en- 
 lightening the eastern world. 
 
 I have said that although the domain of the United States 
 has been enlarged in consequence of the war with Spain, that 
 enlargement was neither intended nor desired when the war 
 began. The sole object of the conflict was to end the long and 
 bitter oppression of the people of Cuba. But since territorial 
 expansion has followed, we are not dismayed by it. We rec- 
 ognize that v/e live in an age of empire-building. Since the 
 downfall of Rome no such mighty empires have reared them- 
 selves on our planet as Britain and Russia. The one extends 
 through half of Europe and Asia, the other is potent in all the 
 continents of the globe. And this Republic of ours — has it 
 dwelt contentedly within its ancient limits? Nay, territorial 
 expansion has been the law of its life. The earlier generations 
 spread from the Pacific to the Alleghenies, and thence to the 
 Mississippi River; the purchase of Louisiana in 1803 opened up 
 the country to the Rocky Mountains ; next followed the cession 
 of Florida in 1819, the Texas annexation in 1845, the cession 
 by Mexico of the Pacific slope in 1848, and then the purchase 
 of the detached territory of Alaska in 1867. Up to the purchase 
 of Alaska all annexations had been of contiguous continental 
 territory ; and in all cases, including Alaska, the domains an- 
 nexed were so sparsely settled that they might almost be 
 described as unpeopled, and they were immediately occupied by 
 men of our own race either from the older states or from Europe. 
 But in 1898 we annexed Hawaii, which is largely peopled by 
 
 20 
 
Asiatic and other alien races. No American who has stopped 
 at Honolulu in crossing the Pacific will regret the annexation 
 of this unique oceanic emporium, this solitary and invaluable 
 outpost and station between Asia and America. It is, no doubt, 
 a long way from Plymouth Rock and James River. But the 
 sons of the cavaliers and Puritans who have seen the nation ex- 
 pand from those far eastern foci across the continent and half 
 way towards the Orient cannot be expected to shed tears or sit 
 down in despair because the flag has been carried to the coast of 
 Asia and now waves over i,8oo islands and is big with blessing 
 for 8,000,000 Filipinos ! 
 
 The expansion of the United States has furnished a new 
 and important political lesson to mankind. Up to the nineteenth 
 century it was universally believed that vast political aggre- 
 gates have an inherent tendency to self-dissolution. This sup- 
 posed law found confirmation in the fate of the most extensive 
 empires known to history — the empire of Trajan and Marcus 
 Aurelius and the empire of Alexander the Great. But if we 
 analyze historical causes, instead of blindly citing historical 
 precedents, we shall see that there are two principles indispensa- 
 ble to stability of a political organism — local home rule and cen- 
 tralized government — and that while the political genius of 
 • Rome knew how to secure concert of action even on a gigantic 
 scale, it sacrificed local self-government, and that while the politi- 
 cal genius of Greece was devoted to local rights and liberties it 
 so completely identified the city with the state that its so-called 
 empire was nothing but a mechanical aggregation of independent 
 commonwealths, which made permanent concert of action abso- 
 lutely impossible. Even Aristotle laid it down that the state 
 must be of moderate population ; because, "who could command 
 in war, if the population were excessive, or what herald short of 
 a Stentor could speak to them?" Now the example of the 
 United States has shown that, thanks to steam and electricity 
 which abolish distance, the modern state admits of unbounded 
 territorial organization without loss of supreme control at the 
 center or of local self-government in any of the members. The 
 federal organization of our repubHc, with a wise distribution of 
 the powers and functions of government to the states and to the 
 Union, is the explanation of this miracle in politics. And it is 
 a miracle without parallel. For though the English colonies 
 
 21 
 
enjoy self-government they are not organized as integral parts 
 of the British empire, and though Russia wields a strong hand 
 from St. Petersburg, the conglomerate races whicli constitute 
 the Russian empire are not self-governing. The equipoise be- 
 tween central sovereignty and local independence is the balance 
 wheel of the American system. This is our contribution to the 
 politics of the world. And this is the surest guaranty of the 
 permanence of our Republic. 
 
 Now this organization of the United States under which un- 
 bounded territorial extension may be reconciled with a solid 
 union and full local liberties furnishes the solution of our politi- 
 cal problem in the Philippine Islands. The Commission, of 
 which I had the honor to be president, has recommended that 
 the Filipinos be given a form of territorial government more lib- 
 eral even than that which Jefiferson bestowed upon the people 
 of the territory of Louisiana. And, as Jefferson wrote the Dec- 
 laration of Independence, I should think that every one might 
 be convinced that the recommendation of the Commission was 
 sufficiently liberal. The President has adopted this recommen- 
 dation and is making arrangements to put it into immediate 
 effect. Do you think the Filipinos will fare badly under a gov- 
 ernment more liberal than that enjoyed by some of our former 
 territories? Is there any melting heart here that pities a people 
 so circumstanced? Pity a people you have redeemed from for- 
 eign and domestic oppression ! Pity a people over whom your 
 flag waves with the blessings of freedom and civilization ! For 
 my part I can only congratulate them on their unparalleled good 
 fortune. 
 
 Besides the mourners and pessimists, however, I must say 
 a word about the Jingoes. Now the Jingoes are a sect who 
 hold that everything is ours that we can lay hands on, and that 
 other people have no rights which we need respect. Their phil- 
 osophy of the Philippine question is exceedingly simple. It is 
 this : Greed in their own hearts. Gold in the Philippines, and 
 God in heaven to satisfy the appetite with its desired object! 
 The inhabitants of the Archipelago, of whom there are some 
 8,000,000, never enter into their calculations ; or if they do, it is 
 simply as material for exploitation or food for bullets. Eight 
 million Filipinos with no legal or moral rights that we need con- 
 sider! Eight million immortal souls to be treated as mere 
 
 22 
 
chattels ! Yet this is the gospel of the Jingoes. "Let us pass 
 them by/'' as the wise guide directed in regard to that peculiarly 
 repulsive class in Dante's Inferno. Fortunately their number is 
 small, and the American people will in due time punish them for 
 their infamy. 
 
 The instinct of expansion, as Matthew Arnold has well said, 
 is the basis of human civilization. But this instinct, though 
 indispensable to any progress in civilization, would if left to 
 itself yield nothing higher than the supremacy of brute strength 
 and cunning. The other conditions of civilization, the claim- 
 ants which man must satisfy before he can be humanized, are 
 virtue and piety, liberty and justice, knowledge, art, and the 
 power of social life and manners. If we are a civilized nation 
 our mission in the Philippines must be the promotion of this 
 civihzation. A stronger, and, I believe, a higher will than ours 
 set us in that distant archipelago. What if the divine purpose 
 be the extension of our free institutions and of all that is best 
 in our civilization throughout the Orient? As the object of the 
 divine government of the world seems to be, according to Les- 
 sing, the education of the human race, what if we are called to be 
 the agents of that purpose in the Philippine Islands? I know 
 not. These themes are too high for us. But I know and you 
 know that we cannot be true to ourselves, or loyal to the new 
 obligations that have come upon us, unless we recognize that 
 this last expansion of our Republic is a summons to work for 
 the material, intellectual, and moral elevation of the Filipinos, 
 to teach them to practice in ever-growing measure the unwonted 
 lessons of self-government, and by so doing to make our flag, 
 which is already the symbol of irresistible power, the star of 
 promise and the emblem of benediction to all the oppressed peo- 
 ples of the awakening Orient. 
 
 23 
 
AriER DINNER 
 
 AT THE CLUB 
 
 TOASTS 
 
 The Orator of the Day, 
 
 Response, 
 
 Greater America, 
 
 Great in War, 
 
 Lafayette, 
 
 The Old Flag, 
 
 The East and West, 
 
 The President 
 
 Hon. Jacob Gould Schurman 
 
 Genl. W. H. L. Barnes 
 
 Rev. William J. McCaughan 
 
 Mr. John Maxey Zane 
 
 - Hon. Murray F. Smith 
 
 Hon. Timothy L. Woodruff 
 
 24 
 
Introductions of the speakers by President Gary and their 
 responses to the several toasts were as follows : 
 
 THE ORATOR OF THE DAY. 
 
 PRESIDENT GARY: Gentlemen of the Union League 
 Glub: In introducing the speakers this evening, I shall not 
 deem it necessary to give their biographies. If they are orators 
 the fact will appear. If they have messages for you they will 
 be duly delivered. Of the orator of the day, nothing that I 
 could say would add anything to your appreciation of his great 
 performance of this afternoon; of our sense of the honor 
 and service he has done us. He is at the head of one 
 of the great educational institutions of this country, an institu- 
 tion which has come to play a very large part in the educational, 
 and I may say, in the higher sense, the political life of this 
 country. I esteem it a fortunate thing that the heads of these 
 great educational institutions and their p'rofessors are coming 
 to take an active part in public affairs, and that the head of our 
 nation is turning to them to find fitting representatives of this 
 government at foreign posts, and especially when service requir- 
 ing learning, research and judicial fairness is required. I think 
 and we all feel that President McKinley, in inviting our guest of 
 the evening, the orator of the day, to stand at the head of the 
 Philippine Gommission, not only did honor to himself, but great 
 credit to the country as well as great service. It only remains 
 for me as President of the Glub, in your behalf, to publicly thank 
 the orator of the day for the honor and service that he has done us 
 this day and by being with us this evening. I take great pleasure 
 in again introducing to you Hon. Jacob Gould Schurman. 
 
 HON. JAGOB GOULD SGHURMAN : Mr. President 
 and Gentlemen of the Union League Glub : I do not feel that 
 I should be expected to make much of a speech this evening. 
 If you knew how I enjoyed this delicious dinner, how little I 
 have thought of what I am going to say now, I do not believe 
 you would want me to occupy much of your time. It has been 
 a good dinner — a delicious dinner. I wish it had been pro- 
 tracted. 
 
 25 
 
I think of a speech I once heard a great orator make. It 
 was Wendell Phillips. It was my good fortune to hear him after 
 I had heard some of the great orators of the English-speaking 
 world, Gladstone and Mr. Spiirgeon, whom I had the pleasure 
 of knowing, and Henry Ward Beecher. It was a Phi Beta 
 Kappa oration at Harvard. After the delivery of the ora- 
 tion there was a luncheon of the Phi Beta Kappa, and the orator 
 of the day -was called upon for a speech. It is a number of years 
 ago now, but I remember very distinctly what he said. He 
 said to them : 'There was once a man accused of murder. The 
 case came up for trial, and the jury were ready to acquit unani- 
 mously, but the man asked permission to speak, and the man was 
 convicted of murder and hanged." Now I escaped. I escaped 
 once today. I have had an exceedingly kind and generous set of 
 men as my auditors and critics, and I do not think under the cir- 
 cumstances, Mr. President, I should do more than thank you, 
 sir, and the members of the Union League, for the great pleasure 
 which I have enjoyed in visiting you, the honor that it has been 
 to me to speak under your auspices and the generous and flat- 
 tering reception you have awarded me ; but if I were to add any- 
 thing to this present expression of thanks, it would be to say 
 that the toast before you is probably not in reference to any in- 
 dividual, but describes rather a type. The orator of the day, of 
 this day — and oh, what an opportunity he has ! I thank God I 
 live in this age. There has been nothing hke it since the Civil 
 War. What opportunities there will be for oratory in the next 
 ten or fifteen years. But, gentlemen, for oratory you need the 
 occasion and the man. I do not find that Greek oratory flourished 
 throughout all Greek history. It flourished in the fourth and fifth 
 centuries before Christ, when the Greek state was undergoing a 
 great revolution. It flourished in the days of Sophocles and 
 Pericles. It flourished in the days of Demosthenes, who sent 
 out his fulminations against Philip, because Philip was under- 
 mining the liberties of the Greek cities and state. And I do not 
 find that oratory flourished from the founding of the city of 
 Rome down to the Close of the Roman Empire. It flourished 
 when the provinces were oppressed, and Cicero pronounced 
 his condemnation against the oppressors. And I do not find, as 
 I read English history, that oratory flourished from William the 
 Conqueror to the eighteenth century. It flourished in the 
 
 26 
 
eighteenth century when England lost the American thirteen 
 colonies. This was the age of Pitt and the great English orators 
 whom you know. So that I believe that for the production of 
 an orator you need an occasion ; and for us, believe me, the 
 occasion has just come. I think it is Matthew Arnold that com- 
 plained of the monotony of American life; everybody looked 
 alike; everybody read the same newspapers; the cities were all 
 built alike. Mr. President, we have brought eighty-four new 
 tribes under the American flag during the last year! The 
 monotony is of the past, but oh, what a variety in the future! 
 And then there can be no oratory without truth-telling. I heard 
 from a colleague of mine the other day the greatest condem- 
 nation I ever heard of an oration. A man made a speech on a 
 certain subject — I will not mention what, or you might locate 
 who the speaker was — and my colleague said it was meant to be 
 an oration, but it lacked the first element of an oration — sincer- 
 ity. There is no oratory without truth. The man who wants 
 to be an orator must believe something and be determined that 
 other people shall be convinced of the truth that is burning in 
 his own heart. And the orator of the day must be a man who 
 sees where the intellectual and moral aspect of things is deepest 
 in human nature. It is conscience that makes cowards of us all 
 when we do wrong. If you appeal to humanity you must take 
 men on the moral side. That is what made Gladstone the power 
 he was in English history for two generations. Conscience may 
 sometimes get strangely twisted, so that Carlyle said of him: 
 "The trouble with Gladstone is that he is all conscience, and he 
 can make anything he likes a matter of conscience." That is a 
 disaster indeed, but there can be no oratory without conscience ; 
 and we are going to have just such issues in right and wrong in 
 great public matters during the next few years. 
 
 It is to be settled within the next few years whether we shall 
 treat the people of the Philippine Islands and the people of 
 Puerto Rico justly and generously, or whether we shall exploit 
 them for our own convenience, and for the enrichment of certain 
 classes. The cry of our next political campaign will be, ''Anti- 
 ImperiaHsm" and "Anti-trust," and I beHeve, sir, with reference 
 to Puerto Rico, that President McKinley is right, and that Con- 
 gress is wrong. 
 
 Perhaps you will permit me, when I tell you I am a Repub- 
 
 27 
 
lican — perhaps you will permit me to say that I see no such 
 danger before the Republican party in the forthcoming cam- 
 paign as this ; that its critics will say, if this congressional meas- 
 ure now pending goes through, that some of the greatest trusts 
 of the country went to Congress and forbade it to pass the 
 humanitarian and equitable recommendation of the President 
 of the United States. 
 
 We hold Puerto Rico, and we hold the Philippine Islands in 
 trust for the benefit of their inhabitants. We are now on trial 
 before the forum of the world. The world has witnessed great 
 experiments. It has seen England lose her thirteen colonies, 
 now the United States of America, because she would govern 
 them for her interests and not for theirs ; and we shall lose and 
 deserve to lose, our new possessions, unless we learn to govern 
 them in their interest and not in ours. 
 
 But, Mr. President, I have confidence in the good sense, and 
 in the sense of justice of the American people, and I believe that 
 they will back the President of the United States in his just and 
 equitable recommendation regarding the Island of Puerto Rico. 
 
 I thank you, sir, for the great kindness which you and this 
 Club have shown me during my stay, and I will ask you to 
 drink with me the health of the President of the Club. May his 
 reign be prosperous ! 
 
 GREATER AMERICA. 
 
 PRESIDENT GARY: We of Chicago are accustomed to 
 look upon our city as being an epitome of the whole country, 
 in its courage, energy, enterprise, marvelous growth and varied 
 characteristics, but you will remember it is told of one of our 
 chiefest romancers that he laid down and died of a broken heart 
 because he said he could not invent a lie so large, about Chicago 
 that it did not fall short of the actual truth. If to do justice to 
 Chicago was so impossible, even with the aid of romance, we 
 can well appreciate the task of him who undertakes to speak of 
 the whole country, of which Chicago is but a feeble type. We 
 know what America was in the time of Washington, and with 
 what wide vision and confident hope he contemplated its ex- 
 panded growth and glory. What the "Greater America" of to- 
 day is will now be told us by California's famous lawyer and 
 
 28 
 
orator and most eminent citizen, Genl. W. H. L. Barnes, of San 
 Francisco. 
 
 GENL. W. H. L. BARNES: Mr. President and Gentlemen 
 of the Union League Club of Chicago: When I received sev- 
 eral months since the invitation of the Secretary of the Commit- 
 tee on Public Speakers to be present with you on this occasion, 
 to-night seemed far away and Chicago a vast distance from the 
 Pacific Coast. I wondered how I should get on in a community 
 whose members were all strangers to me ; and I entered 
 the limited train that passes from the chief city of the Pacific 
 Coast to this pivotal metropolis of the nation with many mis- 
 givings. But as I came over the splendid railways that connect 
 the western ocean with the great lakes, in comfort and luxury; 
 well fed all the way, and lying down at night to rest as com- 
 fortably as though I was under my own roof tree, confident that 
 on the immense machine that headed the train was one of those 
 heroes of modern transportation — the American engineer, grimy 
 as a soldier in battle, blear-eyed with the wind and rain, with 
 hand upon the lever, and evermore watching the perilous thread 
 of the rails, I was proud of my American citizenship ; and 
 when I sat to-day in your magnificent Auditoriiimand looked at 
 an American audience responding with such intense fervor to 
 the splendid orator of the day, I was no longer a stranger, for I 
 was among those who thought as I thought and felt as I felt, 
 and as the songs of liberty rang from the stage and throughout 
 the vast assemblage, and I heard that splendid chorus of sound 
 as it shivered to the roof of the great building, I felt myself at 
 home. I may seem a stranger to you, gentlemen, but you do 
 not seem strangers to me. Thave lost the sensation of the emi- 
 grant and I feel already as though I were native to the snow and 
 slush and to the inclement sky that has been over us to-day. 
 When I left the land of flowers and fruit ; when I traveled out 
 of the Sacramento V^alley where the summer fallowed grain was 
 already nine or ten inches high, and where the hills were bloom- 
 ing in the beauteous splendor of the crimson and yellow wild 
 flowers of California ; when I saw the trees budded out with the 
 promise of an abundant fruitage, I wondered if I would feel cold 
 in a Chicago mid-winter, but I have had no chilly moments. I 
 am wearing the same integuments that protected me from the 
 
 29 
 
balmy breezes of California and have gon,e about Chicago with- 
 out a shiver. I think my heart has kept me warm. 
 
 The theme allotted to me, ''Greater America," was indeed 
 great, and I wished I were equal to the task of expounding it. 
 When I revert to the history of this continent, not merely that 
 of its later settlement by the Anglo-Saxon race, but to those 
 earlier times that followed the daring voyage of the great Gen- 
 oese navigator from Palos to the Bahamas ; when I realize what 
 power Spain then possessed ; how her soldiers and sailors in- 
 vaded this continent ; how De Soto marched from Florida across 
 the lower belt of the southern states and died an exile upon the 
 banks of the Mississippi ; how Cortez landed at Vera Cruz and 
 with his little army captured the Empire of Mexico, where the 
 Spaniard, remained for three hundred years the master of the now 
 awakening Republic ; when I remember how Coronado and 
 Corrillo sailed on the Pacific Coast further to the north than 
 the present line of Oregon and never saw the Bay of San Fran- 
 cisco; how Magellen circumnavigated the globe and gave the 
 name of his king to the archipelago where our soldiers are now 
 fighting for the flag ; when I remember that Sir Francis Drake 
 at the close of the sixteenth century, cruising in search of Span- 
 ish merchantmen, discovered the harbor of San Francisco, and 
 from a rivulet that flows to-day back of that Presidio of San 
 Francisco where the armies of the nation have been encamped 
 w^ithin the last two years, and where so many of its soldiers are 
 buried in an already overcrowded cemetery, filled his casks 
 with water and sailed away from such a scene and never thought 
 enough of it upon his return to his native land to mention that 
 he had discovered such a bay; when I remember how on the 
 Atlantic Coast the Dutch prosecuted repeated explorations, and 
 the French as well, I recognize that it was manifest destiny, as 
 the orator of the day told us, that the Almighty God who holds 
 the fate of mankind in the hollow of His divine hand, had made 
 a reservation upon this continent for the English-speaking race 
 that now inhabits it, I have been proud to feel that we are Ameri- 
 can citizens of this glorious land. 
 
 The sentiment speaks of ''Greater" America. At what period 
 was it greater than another? It was always great and is still in 
 the comparative degree, Mr. President; not yet in the superla- 
 tive, because when any nation is greatest and its tree of life be- 
 
 30 
 
gins to die at the top, the age of its decadence and weakness 
 has begun. America has not yet reached its superlative degree 
 and I feel it never will until the banner of the stars and stripes 
 shall at last be furled in the presence of the banner of the cross 
 that hangs out upon the battlements of heaven. 
 
 It was a great America when Washington went to Cam- 
 bridge and took command of the Continental armies. It was 
 great when the mother country was fought to a standstill upon 
 the ocean and the Continental armies marched victorious from 
 Bunker Hill to Yorktown. It was a great epoch when the Treaty 
 of Paris was signed and the United States of America was recog- 
 nized as a power among nations, as an existing, free and inde- 
 pendent government on the face of the earth. Probably the 
 men of that time thought that the recognition of our Republic 
 by the mother country was a signal point in its career and would 
 remain forever the greatest subject of national pride and con- 
 gratulation. It was still greater when, in the War of 1812, the 
 young Republic for the second time challenged the British 
 Empire to the conflict of battle and on sea and lake, from Balti- 
 more to New OrleanSj marked new fields of victory and made 
 new history for the American flag and American principles. 
 America became greater when Mr. Jefiferson, by Treaty with the 
 French Emperor, obtained control of the navigation of the Mis- 
 sissippi River, yet many of the thinking men of his time opposed 
 the policy of Jefferson ; denounced his statesmanship, and hon- 
 estly q.uestioned the capacity of the American Constitution for 
 extension over the vast territory then acquired. 
 
 As I crossed this waterway thirty-six hours ago I thought 
 that if the great RepubHcan had yielded to the pessimists and 
 the timid of his time — if he had shrunk from taking into the pos- 
 session and control of the United States the immense territory 
 of Louisiana, I might never have been a citizen of California, and 
 those who lived on this side of the Mississippi looking across its 
 waters would behold a long line of fortresses defended by the 
 armies and guns of some foreign power disputing our right to 
 travel on its waters, except by humiliating treaties with it. But 
 who doubts now that Mr. Jefferson, by the Treaty of 1803, per- 
 formed an act of greatest grandeur and almost superhuman wis- 
 dom that will endear his name to posterity as long as there shall 
 be upon the continent a remnant of the race that now inhabits it ? 
 
 31 
 
It was greater America when we succeeded in driving out the 
 Spanish buccaneers from Florida and for five milHon dollars paid 
 to American citizens for Spanish spoliation, acquired the title of 
 Spain to that wonderful peninsula. 
 
 We hear a good deal of talk to-day of the crime of taking 
 possession of foreign territory without the consent of its in- 
 habitants, or its acquisition by treaty, yet the United States 
 government was compelled to resort to the same species of peace 
 making in order to reduce to obedience the Seminole Indians 
 who lived in the swamps and everglades of Florida, and whose 
 territory we took by treaty with Spain without asking their 
 permission. It cost this country a seven-year war to pacify the 
 savages and in one battle wdth the Seminoles the United States 
 army had more men killed than we have lost in any one conflict 
 in the Philippines. This expansion made a greater America, 
 and it became still greater when the United States stretched out 
 its arms and took to its bosom the struggling Republic of Texas 
 and drove the Mexican back into his own country. It was 
 greater America when the army of Kearney started from Mis- 
 souri for an eight months' march of a thousand miles across the 
 continent, and, after suffering every kind of hardship, took pos- 
 session of California. 
 
 It was greater America when Scott's army from \'era Cruz 
 and that of Taylor from the Rio Grande River, marched to the 
 capital of Mexico and, after an unexampled series of victories, 
 dictated the terms of a most generous peace. Again greater 
 America paid for the land she had conquered the right to occupy 
 and hold. To Mexico the United States paid fifteen million 
 dollars for the territory north of Arizona and seven millions 
 more for what we acquired by the purchase concluded by Mr, 
 Gadsden, our Minister to Mexico, some ten years later. By 
 reason of all these great advances and struggles the United States 
 has to-day on one side the Atlantic, and on the other the Pacific 
 Ocean. It was a great day for America when Admiral Dewey, 
 in obedience to the order of the Commander-in-Chief to search 
 out and destroy the fleet of Spain in the Philippines, entered the 
 Port of Manila and made the "Olympia" the May Day Queen 
 of all the navies of the world. It w^as a great day, too, when 
 Cervera made the second Spanish discovery of America on the 
 Southern coast of Cuba, and 1 pause to say that when Admiral 
 
 32 
 
Dewey destroyed ten fighting sliips of Spain in the Bay of 
 Manila, and when the Atlantic squadron assailed the Cristobal 
 Colon, the Maria Teresa. A'iscaya, Almirante Oquendo, the 
 Furor and Terror, and in half of a day strewed them on the 
 Cuban waters like the wrecked galleys of Antony upon the shores 
 of Actium ; took eighteen hundred prisoners ; destroyed eig4it 
 hundred lives and twenty, million dollars' worth of Spanish prop- 
 erty, as an answer to the dastardly destruction of the white ship 
 that lay at a peaceful anchor in the harbor of Havana, I ap- 
 proved for the first and only time in my life of the ratio of six- 
 teen to one. 
 
 Who wonders that the American nation is a fighting nation? 
 Its life has been marked by struggles, and its battlefields are 
 found from Canada to ^Mexico. There must be something in 
 .heredity, for never since the sun shone upon nations have armies 
 more brave been gathered together from a body of such peace- 
 loving people or conducted with greater skill than American 
 armies commanded by American generals. While there are 
 other peoples wdio exult in their military history and their suc- 
 cess in arms, yet I venture to say that if the war now going on 
 in South Africa had been waged by an American army and led 
 by American generals, it might have been ended three months 
 ago. And now^ shall we remain confined by the oceans that 
 wash the shores of our country? Is the fact that water is on 
 either side of the continent to keep us forever from passing over 
 it to other lands? There was a time when oceans separated 
 nations. To-day the oceans unite rather than separate them. 
 Our orator said to-day that time and space have been annihilated 
 by steam and the electric cable. It takes no longer to send a 
 steamship to the Philippines than it does to send a ship load of 
 passengers from San Francisco to Dawson City. I should have 
 spoken before of the territorial acquisition of Alaska, but I pause 
 now to say that probably no statesman of his or any other times 
 was more seriously assailed by his contemporaries than was Mr. 
 Seward for his purchase of the Territory of Alaska from the 
 Imperial government of Russia for a consideration of seven 
 million two hundred thousand dollars. It was land that could 
 only be reached by water ; was thousands of miles away, and 
 frozen within the arctic circle. Mr. Seward declared it would 
 require more than a quarter of a century for the American people 
 
 33 
 
to learn to appreciate the value of this acquisition, and he was 
 right ; for it is to-day only begun to be valued at its true worth, 
 and, indeed, Great Britain has been almost ready to go to war 
 with us to cut out of it a harbor where its Northwest Territory 
 can reach salt water. For the seven millions paid Russia for 
 this splendid territory the United States and its citizens have, in 
 one way or another, according to recent reports, realized one 
 hundred and forty million dollars from Mr. Seward's purchase, 
 and yet hardly an indentation has been made by American enter- 
 prise upon its soil. Why do we talk of distance? Mr. President, 
 it is nearly as far by ocean, through Dutch Harbor and the coast 
 to Cape Nome, as it is from San Francisco to the Phihppines, 
 and yet there are waiting to-day upon the shores of the Pacific 
 probably sixty thousand men, and every vessel and steamer that 
 can meet the requirements of the navigation laws is waiting, for 
 the breaking up of the arciic winter to transport this volunteer 
 army of civilization to the shores of Alaska, to draw from it the 
 vast wealth it is ready to pour into the lap of this great country 
 of ours. Why talk of distance? The pioneers who crossed the 
 deserts from St. Joseph to the mountains of California left there 
 early in the springtime and for six long months fought their way 
 across the plains, leaving behind them more bones of men and 
 animals than the white-crested waves that lift themselves be- 
 tween us and the Philippines. I was proud of you, sir (turning 
 to President Schurman), when you said that where the flag of 
 our country has been planted, so far as you were concerned, it 
 should forever remain. My heart responded to that sentiment. 
 No American citizen loves the flag of his country more than I 
 do. To me, as to every true American, the national ensign has 
 the same meaning whether its white stripes stififen under the pale 
 coruscations of the Arctic aurora or its red bands blush a deeper 
 crimson beneath the passionate kisses of an equatorial sun. To 
 him, wherever it is borne, from State to Territory, from conti- 
 nent to archipelago, from the fields of commerce to those of bat- 
 tle, from the bright day of prosperity to the darkness of an 
 adverse night, under sun or stars, it speaks a single language and 
 utters a solitary prophecy. As to the rapt vision of Constantine 
 there shone in the heavens the sacred emblem of humanity's 
 redemption and above it a sure promise of victory in its name — 
 as to the far away watchers of Natal's beleaguered city the elec- 
 
 34 
 
trie chirography of science wrote in dazzling characters upon the 
 clouds that lowered above it the inspiring message that all was 
 yet well with those who waited within its well-defended trenches 
 for the music of the bugles and the cannon of the delivering 
 hosts of England, so to the true American his flag is the perpet- 
 ual symbol of his abiding faith in the ultimate triumph of liberty, 
 justice, religion, and the pursuit of happiness, and an unfailing 
 assurance that all is and shall be forever well wherever it is 
 found. Wherever the flag goes there we go and with it the 
 civilization and the commerce of our native land. I wish you 
 could see the wharves of San Francisco. I can remember when 
 it was a sight that excited almost as much attention as a band 
 of music when freight was carried to an Orient-bound steamer. 
 To-day every Avharf is trembling beneath the burden of American 
 manufactures, of American products, American flour and Ameri- 
 can lumber. The mills on the northwest coast have to-day for 
 the Orient more .orders for lumber than they could fill if they 
 ran exclusively upon these orders for two years from the first day 
 of January, 1900. We are shipping the products of our manu- 
 factures — machinery of all kinds, furniture and food, of every 
 description-^whatever can be used by the human family. In- 
 deed, I was struck the other day with astonishment when, look- 
 ing at one of those new Japanese steamers, to see that she was 
 taking on board for Hongkong hundreds of cases of Mellin's 
 food for infants. This diet may be the progenitor of a new sys- 
 tem of nourishment that will make the Asiatic, sooner or later, 
 sufficiently well fed to be capable of American citizenship. In- 
 deed, I know no race that is incapable of improvement under the 
 American system. Our nation has, since 1821, assimilated, 
 digested and made good citizens of millions of Irishmen, and a 
 stomach that can digest them can take care of anything. I do 
 not wish by this to be understood as reflecting upon that race, 
 for it is a great one. It has done its own and England's fighting 
 for two hundred years, and the Irish-American citizen has fought 
 as well for American supremacy as if he or his progenitors had 
 come over in the Mayflower. There is in this country a wonder- 
 ful power of assimilation. I do not know whether it is through 
 the climate or the political constitution of the country, but it re- 
 ceives and Americanizes men of every race, from Sweden to 
 Java, and all of them in tim.e become good citizens. Therefore, 
 
 35 
 
why need we fear? For myself I do not. I believe in our in- 
 stitutions. I believe in the boundless capacity of our system of 
 government to develop and nourish all that is good in man. I 
 passed through seven States of the United States that I might be 
 here to-night. Along the whole route there was no line of de- 
 markation betw^een them. You never knew, except by reterence 
 to the railroad guide and station announcements, that you had 
 passed from California to Nevada, from Nevada to Utah, from 
 Utah to Wyoming and all the way through their long succession, 
 for it was one united country. We spent a million lives and three 
 thousand million dollars to decide that ours was a united and in- 
 divisible nation and when the controversy was settled, and Mr. 
 Lincoln struck the shackles from six million bondsmen, we set- 
 tled the race. question forever; and I beheve the American peo- 
 ple will support the policy that has been pursued and is now 
 pursued by the President of the United States. I am sure that 
 in the section from which I come you cannot find a single pes- 
 simist, if I except President Jordan of Stanford University. Our 
 people are all expansionists. They may be Republicans or they 
 may be Democrats, but they are all expansionists, and I look this 
 year to see a vote as nearly unanimous for Mr. McKinley's re- 
 election in our part of the country as was given to Washington 
 when he was elected President of the United States for his sec- 
 ond term. 
 
 I will occupy no more of your time and in conclusion I give 
 you the sentiment : American freedom, justice, liberty under 
 the law, and the flag of our country to wave until its field shall 
 be so crowded with stars that the white shall obliterate the blue. 
 
 GREAT IN WAR. 
 
 PRESIDENT GARY : Whatever may be said of Chicago's 
 boastfulness, she has never been found boasting of her spirit- 
 ual pre-eminence. Not that she does not possess it, but be- 
 cause she has preferred to confine herself to those things which 
 can be seen and verified. But we always have been proud of 
 our clergymen, of their high character and ability, and although 
 many of them have been snatched away from us from time to 
 time, by New York and Brooklyn and other cities in their reck- 
 
 36 
 
less and hopeless efforts at rivalry, we have always had an 
 abundant supply left, for we have made reprisals, and have some 
 captures of our own, and I believe it is true that these captive 
 clergymen admit that in their captivity here they have enjoyed 
 more liberty than in any freedom they have known elsewhere. 
 We have one of these captive clergymen with us to-night, and 
 I think he will testify that he has come among an appreciative 
 people, and that the atmosphere has warmed toward him into 
 one of sincere admiration and affection. He will speak to us 
 on the militant theme "Great in War." I do not know but 
 I ought to say to him that the preacher here is not required to 
 stick any more closely to his text than he is accustomed to 
 elsewhere. We will listen to the Rev. William J. McCaughan. 
 
 REV. WILLIAM J. McGAUGHAN : Mr. President and 
 Gentlemen : I think there was some mistake in asking me to 
 make any remarks under this theme. I am convinced of that 
 for more than one reason, because to-day I find that the Presi- 
 dent and the other members of the committee had no conception 
 of my nationality or in all probability I would not have been 
 requested to speak at all, for they decided in spite of my protest 
 that, since I had been in Chicago somewhat over a year and 
 was neither appointed a policeman nor elected an alderman, I 
 could not be an Irishman. I presumed that I was asked by 
 the Secretary to speak on this subject because it is supposed 
 people generally, and ministers especially, can talk best on 
 subjects they know nothing about. He added in§ult to injury 
 by suggesting that I should discuss some modern American 
 generals as well as Washington. He evidently imagmed my 
 powers of assimilation were in proportion to the powers of 
 assimilation of the American nation if he thought that in a year 
 I had got sufificiently accustomed to your estimate of your gen- 
 erals to be able to contrast them with the founder of your 
 nation. I disputed long and seriously whether he meant me to 
 compare him to General Shafter or to General Otis. However, 
 the subject from the standpoint of a Britisher is doubtless a 
 subject we look at in a different way from that in which you 
 look at it. Washington as a soldier possessed certain contra- 
 dictory characteristics not often found combined in the indi- 
 vidual, and that, perhaps, more than anything else, led to his 
 
 37 
 
It is seldom you find a man who is 
 reticent and at the same time competent to inspire admira- 
 tion, almost adoration in his fellow men. All ^reat. generals 
 have been more or less reticent. Frederick the Great said if he 
 thought his nightcap knew his plans he would burn it, and that 
 has been the characteristic of most of those who have been 
 successful in war. But their very reticence has frequently been 
 the secret of estrangement between generals and their soldiers, 
 and where their campaigns have been lengthened, the relation- 
 ship has been strained and there has been wanting that perfect 
 affection, that heroic devotion, which the Colonial army ever 
 manifested toward Washington. Not only did this reticence 
 combine itself with the power to inspire admiration, but you 
 find Washington also had another unusual combination of char- 
 acteristics. He paid remarkable attention to details. Many 
 men who are great at details, when it comes to generalities, are 
 altogether at sea. But Washington, like Wellington, was a 
 man who could consider the smallest things as well as the 
 greatest, and the concentration of his attention on the triviali- 
 ties of warfare in nowise lessened his capacity to grasp its more 
 vsignificant movements. In other words, his attention to the 
 little intricacies essential to successful campaigning in no way 
 assumed too great a place in his consideration — were not, in 
 other words, taken out of their true perspective. Wellington 
 had that characteristic when in his Indian campaigns he paid 
 attention to every detail, and it was said had studied with care 
 the smallest things. When he found there was one nail extra in 
 each horse's shoe, he figured out how many tons of iron that 
 meant extra for the bullocks to carry, and ordered it to be 
 stricken out. That was an incident which illustrated his 
 capacity to deal with detail, but it in no way lessened Welling- 
 ton's capacity to deal with the larger issues essential to a true 
 general. It was the same with Washington. There are many 
 other characteristics, but there is only one thing more to which 
 I would refer. Few nations have really been founded by war- 
 riors who can look to their founders as the ideal of citizenship. 
 Among the nations of the world, there are but two — the Ameri- 
 can nation and the Dutch nation — that can look to the founders 
 of their nationality as men who can be held up to their youth 
 to be imitated in all departments of life. Charlemagne was a 
 
 38 
 
great general and a great king, but no one wants to be a modern 
 Charlemagne, and no Frenchman thinks of Charlemagne as an 
 ideal personality. Peter the Great did much for Russia, and he 
 was great in many respects, but who wants to make Peter the 
 Great the hero of his home ? Who wants to hold him up as the 
 ideal of morality? William the Conqueror came to England 
 with his invading hosts. He was a successful warrior and a 
 wonderful administrator. He proved himself the founder of a 
 great monarchy, but who wants to be a modern William the 
 Conqueror? Washington, like William the Silent, Prince of 
 Orange, stands out as a man among men who may be imitated 
 in the camp and in the home, in war and in peace, in the coun- 
 cil chamber and in the tent, and all American citizens cannot do 
 better than strive to reincarnate the founder of their nation in 
 every generation as it comes. 
 
 LAFAYETTE. 
 
 PRESIDENT GARY : It is told that one of Peru's heroes 
 had so endeared himself to his country and those with whom and 
 for whom he fought, by service, sacrifice and the tragic manner 
 of his death that they resolved his name should never be dropped 
 from the roll of the living. Accordingly, on each general muster 
 of the army, his name is called, an officer steps sharply to the 
 front, and, pointing upwards, answers : 
 
 "Absent, but accounted for. He is with the immortals." 
 
 So, too, when the name of Lafayette is called, every true 
 American heart will respond: "He is with the immortals" — 
 there by virtue of his great soul, his service and sacrifice not only 
 for us, but for the cause of liberty and popular government 
 throughout th*e world. 
 
 No one contributed more than he by service here and influ- 
 ence abroad to the final successful issue of the great struggle for 
 independence. No one was nearer to Washington, or shared 
 more fully his confidence, and it is fitting that his name should 
 have a place in every celebration in honor of his great chief. 
 
 The youngest General of the Revolutionary Army — a Major- 
 General before he was twenty years old — it is also fitting that 
 the toast to his name should be responded to by the youngest on 
 
 39 
 
our list of orators — a gentleman who is a new comer to our city, 
 to whom we extend that cordial welcome and opportunity with 
 which Chicago always greets new arrivals of genius and merit. 
 I name Mr. John Maxey Zane, of Chicago. 
 
 MR. JOHN MAXEY ZANE : Mr. President and Gentle- 
 men of the Union League Club : 
 
 The coming year promises to see a statue erected in the 
 French capitol by Americans to the memory of Lafayette. It 
 will be another instance of the many by which our countrymen 
 haA^e shown their appreciation of his character, their unfaiHng 
 gratitude for his zealous labors in behalf of this nation. It is 
 especially fitting that on this anniversary we should remember 
 this man of an alien race to whom Washington gave a full trust 
 and a warm regard. Whatever may be Lafayette's shortcom- 
 mgs as a French leader, we remember him as the benefactor of 
 America, the earnest disciple of Washington. What American 
 is there but loves to recall the brave youth of only 19 years, 
 who left all that high station, ample fortune and distinguished 
 ancestry could give him at the most splendid court in Europe, 
 in order that he might cast his lot with us, fighting for inde- 
 pendence? His eager zeal in France for our benefit, the wel- 
 come succor in money and men, the army of Rochambeau, the 
 Beet of De Grasse, which he, more than any other, helped 
 Franklin to gain for us, his faithful and devoted service as a 
 Revolutionary soldier, his bleeding body borne from the battle- 
 field of Brandywine, the skillful generalship of the campaign. in 
 Virginia, the bravery that led the assault at Yorktown— these 
 are the pictures that rise before our minds, and fill our hearts 
 with tenderness and reverence as we toast his memory tonight. 
 
 He has left to us and to his country a name that is worthy of 
 veneration, the heritage of a singularly pure and disinterested 
 life. He loved liberty for itself alone. With a sympathy as 
 boundless as the sea, his love of freedom embraced the oppressed 
 in every land. He liberated his own slaves at Cayenne, he strove 
 earnestly to abolish servitude in all the French colonies. In a 
 day when every Frenchman seemed given over wholly to self- 
 seeking, he put behind him the proffered power of dictatorship ; 
 when all Frenchmen were taking oath one day to support what 
 they trampled upon the next, when boastful patriotism was too 
 
 40 
 
often "the sole refuge of the scoundrel," he, at least, was faithful 
 to his sworn duty, and gave his whole thought to his country's 
 service. When all France a little later was fawning before the 
 victorious Corsican soldier, he alone refused the splendid rewards 
 of wealth and high command which were lavished upon the 
 marshals of the empire. And, strangest thing of all, in an age 
 of universal corruption of manners and more than French loose- 
 ness of morals, he was that profoundly curious being — a French- 
 man who respected the seventh commandment, a Frenchman 
 of manly morality and domestic virtue. 
 
 Born a member of a privileged order, a noble of vast wealth, 
 and allied to the highest families in France, he gave himself 
 freely to the cause of the poor and the oppressed. He offered 
 his rank, his wealth, almost his life, as a sacrifice to that cause. 
 Sad, indeed, is it to recall the issue for him of the Revolution, 
 which began under such happy auspices and which he did so 
 much to further. When that awful reservoir of France, in which 
 were gathered the turbid waters of the rage, the hate, the bru- 
 tality, the vengeance of centuries of oppression, burst its bounds 
 it swept away beneath its flood all that was best and purest and 
 noblest in national life. The blood-stained miscreants who 
 gained control, the atheists who masqueraded as priests, the 
 savage madmen who ruled as law-givers, knew neither pity, nor 
 mercy, nor remorse, but butchered alike the high-souled patriot, 
 the blameless magistrate, the enlightened scholar, the little chil- 
 dren, the tender and helpless women. Fleeing from these mon- 
 sters of cruelty, Lafayette fell into the clutches of the Austrian. 
 Even his enemies felt compassion for those long years of suffer- 
 ing in the dungeon of Olmutz. Liberated at last, he came back 
 to France, to live under a more imperious, a more heartless 
 despotism than any Bourbon had ever inflicted upon that un- 
 happy country. Bourbon succeeded Corsican, but no ray of 
 hope ever came to cheer the desolate home where Lafayette sat 
 in obscurity and poverty, his very name despised by the fickle 
 race whom he had served so well. It is true, as Lowell sings : 
 ''Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were souls, who 
 who stood alone. 
 While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious 
 stone." 
 But in this country across the seas, his branch had not with- 
 
 41 
 
ered. It is a common saying that republics are ungrateful, but 
 m one, at least,, the saying is untrue. Americans had never forr 
 gotten Lafayette's services to them. In the dark days of the 
 Terror, while he was buried in a dungeon, his fortune confis- 
 cated, and his family reduced to destitution, the American Min- 
 ister to France, Gouverneur Morris, placed the prisoner above 
 want, and to Madam Lafayette and her family gave the grateful 
 assistance of ample means. And when this gentle lady was cast 
 into prison and about to be hurried to the guillotine, which had 
 drunk the blood of her mother and grandmother, it was the same 
 Minister who saved her life from the savage leaders of republican 
 France. During those same years, the son was provided for in 
 this country at the home of Hamilton, and at Mount Vernon. 
 No effort was spared by our foreign ministers to secure Lafay- 
 ette's release from prison. It may not be known to some of us 
 that he was carried until his death upon the rolls of our army as 
 a Major-General. President Jefiferson offered him the post of 
 Governor of the newly purchased Territory of Louisiana. Many 
 square miles of land were given him near where New Orleans 
 now stands. Finally, after long years, he revisited the land to 
 which he had given his youth, and found solace in the knowledge 
 that he was not forgotten. He was showered with the gifts of a 
 nation's gratitude — broad lands and moneys in amplest measure. 
 He passed from city to city, from state to state, the nation's 
 guest, everywhere received with enthusiastic affection. He lis- 
 tened to the eloquent greetings of finished orators. He heard 
 from the lips of the polished Everett "that throughout America 
 there is not a bosom which does not beat with joy and gratitude 
 at the sound of your name." Daniel Webster paused in the full 
 tide of his whole oratory at Bunker Hill to say : *'We have all 
 of us long ago received it in charge from our fathers to cherish 
 your name and your virtues." After this splendid outpouring 
 of national gratitude he returned to his native land to find that 
 he had again become an object of affectionate interest to his own 
 people, and to hold for the remainder of his life an honored place 
 in his country's councils. Called to head another revolution, he 
 established, without bloodshed, what he believed was a stable 
 government, and died filled with the hope that under Louis 
 Philippe his distracted country, after years of misery, had found 
 peace. Yet a few years and France was again to pass from 
 
 42 
 
revolution to anarchy, from anarchy to miHtary despotism, from 
 despotism to ruin, and again the rule of the ferocious mob. 
 Truly, the life and sacrifices not of Lafayette alone, but of many 
 another French patriot, seem to have been made in vain. 
 
 Lafayette had many and great virtues, but we would not be 
 faithful to his memory did we not recognize that he made one 
 great mistake. It may be that men of the Anglo-Saxon blood 
 and men of the serious Germanic races generally cannot truly 
 sympathize with the fickleness, the frivolity, the bombast of 
 French character. The lack of steadiness and balance, the 
 boastfulness in victory, the utter despair in defeat, the latent 
 savagery when the bonds are loosed, that disfigure the national 
 character of Frenchmen, have been emphasized in the century 
 that is now passing away. Lafayette had seen in this country 
 the self-control under victory, the steadiness under defeat, which 
 is our English heritage. He had seen the love of law and order, 
 the respect for personal freedom, the protections thrown around 
 the individual and his rights and property as against the govern- 
 rnent, which is the tradition of Anglo-Saxon liberty. He had 
 seen the actions of a people who were fit to be free; and with 
 that crude theorizing which was the French fashion one hundred 
 years ago, he fondly trusted that every people needed but the 
 benefits of freedom to show itself worthy of that great trust. In 
 this he was mistaken, and utterly misled. We have learned from 
 experience that freedom can be grossly abused, that numberless 
 crimes can be committed in the name of liberty, and that a gov- 
 ernment may call itself a republic and yet be a more ruthless 
 despotism than Russia under the Czars. Even in our own 
 blessed land, the utter collapse of universal suffrage in the gov- 
 ernment of large cities, and the pillage of our municipalities by 
 the corrupt dispensers of municipal plunder, have not left think- 
 ing men that serene, complacent faith in majority rule which 
 they would be glad to cherish. To use an illustration of today, it 
 will be admitted by everyone except the blustering demagogues 
 or the dreamy doctrinaires that this nation would be guilty of an 
 unpardonable crime against civilization should it leave Cuba or 
 the Philippines to the chaos of self-government. But France 
 was little more fitted for a republican form of government in 
 1789 than are the Cubans and Filipinos today. Liberty is worthy 
 of the name only when it is joined with order, with justice, with 
 
 43 
 
mercv, with civilization. This is the true, the beautiful Flower 
 of Liberty. 
 
 ''The blades of heroes fence it round 
 Where'er it springs is holy ground." 
 A government in France republican in form was reduced to the 
 hideous tyranny of Robespierre. The ridiculous antics of the 
 French Assembly disgusted faithful friends of freedom such as 
 Washington. Their unprovoked assaults upon this country 
 brought us to the verge of war, and called Washington from 
 Mount Vernon to head again the armies of the United States. 
 A howling mob of filthy rabble in the gallery dictated the de- 
 crees of the French chamber. Foreign ministers were com- 
 pelled to present their credentials upon the floor of the Assem- 
 bly, and were there given the fraternal embrace by the presiding 
 officer, and ignominiously kissed upon both cheeks by that 
 wretched functionary. Such travesties recall the emphatic ob- 
 jection of our celebrated fellow townsman Dooley to French 
 procedure : "No man shall kiss me, Hennessy, and live." Min- 
 isters of war, of the marine, of justice, and of foreign afifairs were 
 appointed by vote taken at the command of the uproarious gal- 
 lery. Some blatant demagogue who had never seen a cannon 
 or a ship found himself minister of war or of the navy. Their 
 talk of the sacred rights of man was the merest pretense. The 
 very slaves whom Lafayette liberated were confiscated and sold 
 again into slavery. In some mysterious way it came to be be- 
 lieved in France that any riotous mob, burning and killing, was 
 the French people engaged in governing itself. The refusal to 
 shoot at a mob was then, as it is today, the besetting weakness 
 of France. When the savage Parisian populace, the depraved 
 men and abandoned women of a great city, burst into the palace 
 of Versailles, while Lafayette with his army was solemnly guard- 
 ing the place, it was no doubt a thoroughly French performance 
 for Lafayette to lead forth the Queen upon a balcony and appease 
 the mob by kissing her hand, but he would have been a manlier 
 spectacle had he been at the head of his troops mowing down 
 the mob with cannon. Yet the army was little better than the 
 mob. Lafayette complained to Morris that he thought his 
 troops would follow him into battle, but he could not induce 
 them to mount guard when it was raining. Can it be strange 
 that France passed through her fearful deluge of blood, until an 
 
 44 
 
iron soldier came to deliver her from her abject condition and 
 restore order? These are the lessons which are written in blood 
 for our guidance today in governing peoples incapable of gov- 
 erning themselves. 
 
 **New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good~ un- 
 couth ; 
 We must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of 
 truth." 
 It surely is not unbecoming in us to recognize that Lafayette 
 was not equal to the crisis when he held in his hand the destinies 
 of France. There is no sadder or truer saying than "many are 
 called, few are chosen." His mistake lay in not recognizing that 
 no government is fit to exist unless it can make its authority 
 paramount in preserving an orderly administration of the law. 
 This may be an excuse for the fact that Frenchmen have never 
 shown much appreciation of Lafayette's essential nobleness of 
 soul. For a few years after his death a sort of fountain or pump, 
 dribbling intermittently a little stream of water, stood in the 
 Avenue des Invalides. It was crowned with a bust of Lafayette. 
 But in 1840 v/hen, with vast pomp, the ashes of the great Na- 
 poleon were brought from St. Helena to repose in the sarcopha- 
 gus of gilt and marble beneath the magnificent dome of the 
 Invalides, the fountain and the bust were thrown into a celhr in 
 order that they might not impede the triumphant progress of the 
 mighty procession. Even as the great Corsican trampled upon 
 Lafayette living, so the ashes of "Imperious Caesar, dead and 
 turned to clay," thrust aside the sole memorial of the onlv 
 Frenchman who had the courage to withstand him. 
 
 But we may all try to indulge the hope that, after many, many 
 years, even after her last frightful debauch, France is forgetting 
 her love of military despotism, and is gaining some measure of 
 self-control. To that tendency Americans will contribute by the 
 erection of a statue to recall to France the life of one of her 
 purest and most unselfish sons. His image, "graven by a cunning 
 hand," is to stand within the precinct of the stately palace of the 
 Louvre, near by those walls which inclose so much that is illus- 
 trious and ennobling in human effort in the world of art. His 
 body lies in its humble place by the side of his faithful wife, 
 whose life is such a touching "tale of woman's devotion," who 
 came to his lonely dungeon to cheer its gloom, and passed such 
 
 45 
 
years of privation and horror there that she came forth a broken 
 woman, doomed soon to pass to an early grave. Beside that 
 grave it is fitting that Lafayette's tomb should remain, there his 
 fame like the memory of all just men shall blossom in the dust ; 
 but his statue standing in the greatest of all the glittering cap- 
 ital's great places will serve as a lesson — an eternal lesson — to 
 Frenchmen, that one of the greatest of them remained faithful, 
 while the chosen ministers at freedom's altar betrayed her; an 
 eternal lesson that a man to be truly revered should disregard 
 the ghttering bribes of title, of wealth, of selfishness and power, 
 and live nobly for noble ends ; an eternal lesson that, the rights 
 of the humblest or the highest citizen are not less because his 
 liberty or his life is demanded as a sacrifice to the madness of 
 the hour and the clamor of the deluded multitude. There let us 
 hope they may ponder upon Lafayette's courage, his self-devo- 
 tion, his unrequited sacrifices, his zeal for freedom, for justice, 
 for the happiness of his country, there they may meditate upon 
 the life of many another, such as he, pure, stainless and devoted 
 son of France, 
 
 ''* * * till the place 
 
 Becomes religion, and the heart runs o'er 
 
 With silent worship of the great of old. 
 
 The dead but sceptered sovereigns, who still rule 
 
 Our spirits from their urns." 
 
 THE OLD FLAG. 
 
 PRESIDENT GARY : Gentlemen : The next toast is, "The 
 Old Flag" — not "the old flag with an appropriation" — that is 
 not our motto — but the Old Flag whose other name is , Old 
 Glory. The flag which is now the emblem of liberty and union 
 at home, power abroad, and of justice and humanity everywhere ; 
 a flag which knows no defeat, and whose history conveys no 
 suggestion of surrender, cowardice, or shrinking in the presence 
 of any duty or responsibility which the march of events or the 
 outcome of war may bring or has brought. 
 
 This toast will be responded to by a gentleman from Vicks- 
 burg — historic Vicksburg, where brothers fought against broth- 
 ers, not in anger, but for a cause each had made his own, and 
 the courage, valor and persistence which each displayed there 
 
 46 
 
only illustrated how invincible and irresistible they would be 
 when joined as now in a common fealty and how safe this flag 
 will be in their common guardianship and keeping. 
 
 I introduce one of the South's famous orators — Hon. 
 Murray F. Smith. 
 
 HON. MURRAY F. SMITH: In responding to the 
 toast of 'The Old Flag,*' the emblem of the great coun- 
 try over which it waves at this impressive period of the 
 nation's life, the close of one century and the beginning 
 of another, our thought naturally dwells on a comparison of the 
 conditions which now prevail with those at the dawn of the last 
 century. At that time we had barely launched our government, 
 admittedly an experiment, and so feeble were the ties that bound 
 the states to the Union that threats were constantly made that 
 this or that measure was in violation of the compact, and if 
 insisted upon, that some state dissatisfied therewith would with- 
 draw from the Union. Hardly a session of Congress passed 
 without some senator or representative indulging in such threats, 
 and commencing with the Hartford convention and coming down 
 to the resolutions of the Massachusetts Legislature upon the 
 admission of Texas into the Union in 1845, this doctrine was 
 unhesitatingly announced. 
 
 There could be but one result from such a formative condi- 
 tion — a trial of the question that so vexed our early history was 
 inevitable. Hence we had secession ; war followed, the Union 
 was saved, and our flag at last floated over an indissoluble Union, 
 composed of indestructible states. The latent spirit of national- 
 ism awoke to new life. We have ceased to look with fear upon 
 the growth of the nation. We have relegated to the past the 
 idea that this growth in some way imperils the rights of the states 
 and thereby endangers the liberties of the citizen. On the con- 
 trary, the tendency now is rather to look to the nation to sup- 
 press evils the suppression of which properly belongs to the 
 states. 
 
 We are today a nation in the fullest and broadest sense of the 
 word. There lives not within the borders of any state a single 
 citizen who does not thank God that this condition exists. Everv 
 citizen, when he glances aloft and sees our national flag, beauti- 
 ful in its simplicity and marvelously appropriate in design, feels 
 the blood quicken in his veins and involuntarily recalls its glo- 
 
 47 
 
rioiis and ineffaceable history, a history that tells of no wanton 
 aggression, no cruel tyranny, but of a steadily increasing, 
 happy and contented citizenship. 
 
 The century just past has taught us other lessons besides 
 that of nationalism. Out of all the discussions of the multitude 
 of questions arising in the past, and involving the policv of the 
 nation from time to time, history will show that, in the main, the 
 questions have been in the end rightly settled. The sober sec- 
 ond thought of the American people has in the past been uner- 
 ringly right, and we can look to the future with absolute 
 confidence that this nation will do the right thing at the right 
 time. 
 
 There has never been a crisis in our history in the last hun- 
 dred years that numbers of able, earnest and patriotic citizens 
 have not predicted dire disaster to the country if some certain 
 course should be pursued. Nevertheless the people have 
 thought for themselves, disregarded these prophecies of evil, 
 and time has vindicated the wisdom of their decision. Tolerance 
 for difference of opinion exists, because out of this difference 
 arises discussion, and out of discussion right results have been 
 achieved. Thus, as the result of this one hundred years' expe- 
 rience, we have a nation, great, powerful and expanding, gov- 
 erned by a people ripe in experience and with precedents to 
 guide them in any emergency, approved by the test of actual 
 experience. 
 
 I do not assert that there are no conditions which might not 
 be changed for the better, that mistakes have not been made, 
 but what I do assert is that as experience shows the necessity of 
 change, discussion of the measure of this necessity increases, 
 tolerance is exercised, and finally the change is made if the peo- 
 ple are convinced that the welfare of the nation demands it. It 
 will not do to assert that we are infallible ; that mistakes have 
 not been made in the adjustment of crises which have risen up 
 for us to master. In that greatest of all the tests of our talent for 
 just ancl enduring legislation, in time of passion and strife, the 
 reconstruction of the Union harmoniously with the arbitrament 
 of arms, it was no more than natural that the pendulum should 
 swing too far. The proof that it did this is found in the com- 
 monly noted and deplorable fact that the old slave states were 
 left in a condition which, to this day, creates a great gulf in the 
 
 48 
 
way of independence of political thought. My faith in the ge- 
 nius of the people inspires me to think and hope that the time is 
 approaching when a change will be made which will relieve the 
 South from a condition which places bonds upon thought, har- 
 rows the scope of discussion of public questions, and absolutely 
 prohibits independence in political conduct. Thirty years ago, 
 in the heat of excitement engendered by a great civil war, for 
 the first time the Federal Constitution undertook to fetter the 
 states in the matter of suffrage. The result of this has been 
 that in the South a vast majority of the intelligent and best citi- 
 zens of that portion of the Union are forced to act and vote with 
 one party. It will not do to say that this cannot last, for it has 
 lasted for thirty years, and speaking from personal observation 
 and experience, I say I see no chance for a change, so long as 
 the fundamental law remains as it now is. The citizen is as 
 much the creature of his poHtical conditions as he is of his physi- 
 cal conditions. The Northern man, when he comes South, 
 realizes the situation and inevitably aligns himself with his 
 Southern neighbor. Recently I was talking on this line with a 
 New Yorker, who moved to Georgia about five years ago. 
 When he lived in New York he was a Republican. A brother 
 of his, an ardent Democrat, moved West. A short time ago 
 there was a family reunion in New York state, and these two 
 brothers commenced to talk politics. The Western man an- 
 nounced that he was a Republican, the Georgian said "I am a 
 local Democrat." One brother, from his surroundings, could 
 change completely, the other unwillingly was forced to a partial 
 change. 
 
 This change in the fundamental law was made by the North, 
 and if we are ever to go back to the idea of the fathers, that suf- 
 frage is a matter for the states, the* movement must originate 
 and be carried out by the North. But come what may, we of the 
 South will do our best to solve or render innocuous this grave 
 problem as it now exists, and with an eye single to the best 
 interests of the whole country. We are in our father's home, 
 and under the flag that our fathers loved so well. 
 
 We have proven our loyalty to the Union and devotion to the 
 Old Flag in the late war, and the motives of the South, in asking 
 for this change, cannot be fairly questioned. Our young men 
 eagerly volunteered in the service of their country, and rallied by 
 
 49 
 
the thousands to the defense of the Old Flag. In my Con- 
 gressional District a greater number of men volunteered in the 
 late war than from any other Congressional District in the 
 Union, taking into consideration the total number of white men 
 in the district. We have in my city a volunteer company formed 
 long prior to the breaking out of the Mexican war. It fought 
 in the battles of that war, and when the Civil war commenced it 
 was one of the first companies to volunteer on the Southern side. 
 When the war with Spain was declared, it was the first company 
 in Mississippi to volunteer, and it was a touching sight to see 
 the few old survivors of the Civil war, and a very few of the 
 Mexican war, follow their sons and grandsons to the depot and 
 see them enthusiastically dedicate them to the service of the 
 country, and to hear them exhort them to defend the Old Flag. 
 Recently I was traveling through the mountains of Virginia, 
 over the Norfolk & Western Railroad. It was a bleak, wintry- 
 day, and the sky was overcast with clouds. As the train rounded 
 the point of a hill, a small family burying ground came- into view. 
 The rude inclosure around it contained probably half a dozen 
 graves. One was newer-looking than the others, but it had no 
 stone, nor even headboard, to mark the name, or tell who lay 
 buried there ; but one thing did distinguish it from its fellows in 
 that humble little inclosure, and illumined it with a halo of senti- 
 ment and glory — above it floated a little, weather-beaten, cam- 
 bric flag, and that flag was the "Stars and Stripes." He who 
 rested beneath its folds had died in the service of his country, and 
 his relatives, too poor to put this fact in letters graven on stone, 
 but justly proud of his glorious death, selected this method of 
 making known to the passer-by that he who slumbered there was 
 one of the nation's heroes. This is the spirit of the South, and 
 let no man challenge her loyalty to the Union, or her devotion 
 to the Old Flag. 
 
 THE EAST AND WEST. 
 
 PRESIDENT CARY: Gentlemen: What the East is we 
 have seen and know, but the West, like to-morrow, no man 
 has ever found or seen. Early in" the century it was supposed 
 to be somewhere out in Ohio. Those who sought it there were 
 told that it was in Illinois or Indiana, or Wisconsin. Still fol- 
 
 50 
 
lowing they found that it had crossed the Mississippi, the Mis- 
 souri, taken rapid strides over prairie and plain, leaped the 
 rnightv mountains and lighted on the Pacific Slope. But it is not 
 there, and they are now seeking it in the remotest islands of the 
 sea. Vain search ! For only they who overtake the settingLSUn 
 will ever find the West. We need not be surprised if some morn- 
 ing we shall find it has reached round the globe and greets us 
 with the rising orb of day. 
 
 A native of New York, I shall have great pleasure in intro- 
 ducing an eminent citizen of that state to respond to this toast. 
 Although his state is large, its boundaries have not been wide 
 enough to confine his fame. It has crowned him with great dis- 
 tinction, but many think they* see now hovering over his head 
 honors and a halo w^hich no state can give — which only the na- 
 tion can bestow. 
 
 I introduce the Hon. Timothy L. Woodrufif, Lieutenant-Gov- 
 ernor of the State of New York. 
 
 HON. TIMOTHY L. WOODRUFF: Mr. Chairman 
 and Gentlemen of the Union League Club: Coming from 
 the Eastern metropolis to address the Union League Club 
 of the great metropolis of the West on a subject of such 
 limitless possibihties as those embraced within the scope of 
 the subject assigned me, imposes a task as great as any to which 
 I have ever been subjected. In the circumstances which sur- 
 round my coming I should have given a different answer to the 
 highwayman who once held up a stranger as he was about to 
 enter the city of Chicago, demanding his money or his life. 
 *'Go ahead," said the stranger, "and blow out my brains ; I 
 would rather go into Chicago without brains than without 
 money." Sincerely do I appreciate immunity from an expe- 
 rience of this character and rejoice in having been accorded the 
 privileges of meeting the members of the Union League Club of 
 Chicago, whose guests are never called upon to sufifer either 
 financial or physical fracture, unless it may be the latter, and 
 that through over indulgence in its lavish hospitality. x\s a 
 member of both the Union League Clubs of New York and 
 Brooklyn I bear to you fraternal greetings. 
 
 For years we have heard sinister threats against our most 
 cherished institutions and have witnessed attempts of socialism 
 
 51 
 
to revive between the East and the West the spirit of sectionaHsm 
 which in 1861 brought into Hfe all over the North Union League 
 clubs to aid in the preservation of the Union. Born to save the 
 republic from the efforts to disrupt it, these clubs have Hved and 
 multiplied to preserve us in the closing days of the century from 
 repudiation and national dishonor. We can never be too grate- 
 ful to these associations of loyal and courageous men who have 
 made it possible for us to meet tonight under one flag to rejoice 
 together at our nation's glorious deliverance from its most insid- 
 ious enemies at home ; to glory in her marvelous achievements 
 abroad, and to confer together for the continuance of her integ- 
 rity and her prestige among the nations of the world. 
 
 In the present great outburst of American patriotism, South 
 as well as North, the name "Union League" again becomes an 
 inspiration. As the power and glory of Democracy fades away 
 more and more in the obscurity of the past and the great Re- 
 publican Union League inherits added glory from our recent 
 history and acquires new impulse from the present triumphant 
 hour, we may expect in the near future the application of the 
 term "Union League" to clubs having their happy homes in the 
 Sunny South. Far from inconsistent would be such a consum- 
 mation in view of the recent mobilization on the bloody field of 
 Chickamauga, of the "boys in blue" and the "boys in gray" ; in 
 view of our representation simultaneously at the court of Madrid 
 by the Northern general, Stewart L. Woodford, and at Havana 
 by the Southern general, Fitzhugh Lee, who voiced the true 
 American sentiment of the hour when, leaving Cuba, he shouted 
 to the Spaniards, "Just wait until we come back and you'll whis- 
 tle a different tune" ; and in view of the council of war before the 
 fortifications of Santiago in which among the chief participants 
 were General Shafter, of northern Michigan, and General Joe 
 Wheeler, of southern Alabama — Wheeler, who so courteously in- 
 troduced the Federal major, the Northern President of the 
 United States, to his people of the South, that we hear the Presi- 
 dent calling upon the people of the East and West to cherish the 
 memory and guard the graves of the Southern dead. 
 
 The dreams of our Republican statesmen, philosophers and 
 laborers for reform along the whole line of human endeavor are 
 rapidly approaching a fuller realization than ever before. The 
 achievements of the Republican party in the past have been but 
 
 52 
 
stepping-stones to its full development during this the last ad- 
 ministration of the nineteenth century. Both as a party and as 
 a nation we must seek to achieve for others as well as for our- 
 selves. Is it impossible that there can be any disinterested na- 
 tional efifort? It is impossible that there can be any unselfish 
 effort for the public good? Indeed for what other purpose are 
 you Republicans banded together in this powerful political asso- 
 ciation of men called the Union League Club of Chicago ? The 
 cynic may say it is for yourselves, but when one reflects upon 
 your tireless efiforts to secure a better and more perfect govern- 
 ment of this municipality, of your state and of the nation, and 
 how patiently you have contributed of your time and influence 
 to this, all must respect your disinterestedness and civic courage 
 and accord you the full measure of reward that is due to all true 
 American citizenship. 
 
 The East and the West! In his farewell address, Washing- 
 ton, whose birthday we have tonight assembled to celebrate, 
 dwelt upon the importance of one section of the country to every 
 other section, each of which finds its complement in the other. 
 The nation has since grown in population from five millions to 
 eighty-five millions, has spread across the North American con- 
 tinent and even across the Pacific ocean. His argument applies 
 with all its original force to the complement America will find 
 in the islands of the Gulf and of the Pacific. They produce 
 much that we require and we manufacture everything they need. 
 How prophetic then these words from that farewell address: 
 "The East in its intercourse with the West will more and more 
 find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from 
 abroad or manufactures at home, while the West will derive from 
 the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and what 
 is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe 
 the enjoyment of an indispensable outlet for its products to the 
 weight, influence and future maritime strength of the Atlantic 
 side of the Union." 
 
 These words of Washington apply to the vast future trade 
 between the opposite shores of the Pacific as well as to the un- 
 paralleled commerce which has developed since his day, on the 
 American continent, and yet they were uttered nearly half a cen- 
 tury before the Union stretched to the western ocean on which 
 it has a coast Hne of ten thousand miles, and a wealth and popu- 
 
 53 ■ 
 
lation soon to stand as the paramount power of the Pacific. The 
 Mediterranean, so-called because it was the center of the then 
 known world, bearing the commerce of ancient Egypt, Tyre, 
 Athens, Rome, Carthage, Spain, was in time succeeded by the 
 Atlantic as the central sea, until the course of empire in its west- 
 ward sweep spanned the New World and revealed that mighty 
 ocean which the Old World never knew, destined in the century 
 now rising before us to be the Mediterranean of the globe. 
 
 'The East and the West !" Where is the East and where the 
 West of the United States of America in this year of our Lord 
 1900? The geographical center has been gradually moved from 
 the mid-most point of the three hundred and fifty thousand 
 square miles of the original thirteen colonies, first, to a point 
 half-way across the American continent, thence by the acquisi- 
 tion of Alaska, one hundred and twenty-five miles west of the 
 Golden Gate ; until now in starting for the furthermost domain 
 of the republic, it matters not whether you turn your face toward 
 the rising or the setting sun. A zone of freedom now encircles 
 the W'Orld. The patriotism which has welled up from all parts 
 of our common country has forever washed out the sectional 
 lines of latitude which once parted the North from the South 
 and with one more supreme struggle in 1900, like that of 1896, 
 we shall thwart the last effort of any party to substitute a longi- 
 tudinal sectional line separating the East from the West. 
 
 The expansion of the United States, both to the eastward and 
 to the westward, is as natural as has been the expansion of this 
 great city of Chicago. The nation, like the city, or even the 
 town or the village, which does not grow, is the tree that ceases 
 to extend its roots and branches, and like the tree, when growth 
 ceases, decays and dies. The tide in the affairs of nations is like 
 the tide on the shore of the sea ; it ebbs when it ceases to flow. 
 AH history teaches that a nation is subject to the same laws of 
 growth, of decay and of retrogression. The bridge of old was a 
 tree felled across a stream. The boat was dug out of a log. 
 Expansion is already declared in the great bridges that span our 
 rivers and in the magnificent cruisers that bear the names of your 
 city and mine ! Who can stay its onward sweep or stifle its crv 
 of "Westward Ho!"? 
 
 The East and the West ! We of the East claim you and all 
 of the West as the progeny of the Eastern pioneer. Out of this 
 
 54 
 
relationship have come all the best qualities of both sections. 
 Every great commercial house has "New York and Chicago" on 
 its letterheads. Eastern capital eagerly seeks Western invest- 
 ments and Western capital seeks Eastern enterprises. The East 
 and the West together are developing and concentrating the 
 powers of the present and the potential possibilities of the future. 
 
 Railways, steamships, telegraphs, telephones and cables have 
 brought the world together. Many a man goes further between 
 his office and his home daily than could be covered in two whole 
 days a century ago. One takes a trip to Europe or to San 
 Francisco with less preparation and far less fatigue than was at 
 that time incident to a journey between New York and Boston 
 or Philadelphia, the principal commercial centers of the conti- 
 nent. When we consider the physical ease with which today the 
 West can be reached from the East we grasp with corresponding 
 mental ease the idea of present day expansion and perceive how 
 lacking in foresight are those who heed the cry of the anti- 
 expansionists. 
 
 Unless all signs fail the great imperial West will be as Re- 
 publican in 1900 as was the sound-money East in 1896. Our 
 party has stood by every principle it ever enunciated. Defeated 
 in 1892 we reaffirmed in 1896 the great principle of protection to 
 American industries. Largely on that issue was won the victory 
 which placed in the presidential chair its foremost exponent, 
 who, standing by his guns, went down in defeat only to rise 
 again holding aloft the banner of protection. The wage-earners 
 who voted against the Republican party in 1892 had discovered 
 in 1896 that in bringing down upon their heads the roof that 
 protected both them and their employers, they were exposed to 
 the winds of heaven without protection from the cold, while the 
 employer, though also out in the cold, was better prepared to 
 withstand the storms of adversity. We told the Democrats, as 
 together we viewed the spectacle of the fight between the gold 
 and the silver cats on the top of the chimney of the deserted 
 factory, that we would soon put a stop to that scrap when we 
 lighted the fires of McKinley prosperity. If the fire has not 
 quite singed the silver cat to death it certainly has so enveloped 
 him in smoke that he is no longer visible. Silver as an issue has 
 disappeared, except in the silver tones that issue from the wan- 
 dering son of Nebraska. There are no more "solid Democrats." 
 
 55 
 
Those who still claim they are are really "silver plated." 
 
 The triumph of gold has wrought the glory of the nation! 
 Gold is the setting of the gems in Columbia's diadem. Polished 
 and burnished by the attrition of patriotic rivalry in all parts of 
 our common country, its splendor is more refulgent than ever, 
 undimmed by the shadow of a single sectional line. All the 
 forty-five gems that constitute the cluster reflect a greater glory ; 
 augmented by the Pearl of the Antilles and freshly adorned by 
 the jewels of the Orient ! In the new and mighty destiny unfold- 
 ing before us as a nation, emulating as we must the supreme 
 endeavors of the nations of the world at the time of their greatest 
 power, the perfect glory of the future will only come as we do 
 more for mankind and do it better than all the world has ever 
 done. 
 
 56 
 
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