CORRESPONDENCE.
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND SOCIALISM.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.'1 Sin,—I think your readers may like to see a verbatim report of the address given by President Roosevelt on the occasion of the unveiling of the monument to Captain John Underhill at Matinecock, Long Island, on July 11th, 1908. Only very meagre reports of this speech were given in the English newspapers, yet nothing could have been more characteristic of the speaker or of his views and principles. I feel sure that the vigorous note of opposition to Socialism will delight your "Colonel Underhill, Friends, and Neighbours.—It gives me real pleasure to accept this invitation, because I thought it a good thing that the founder of what has become one of the distinctive Long Island families should have a monument erected to him here. I shall not try to speak to you of the career of Captain Underhill—a man who left his mark deep on the history of New England as well as New Holland ; one of the men who in the colonial times helped lay the foundations for the nation that was to be—for others will address you upon his life. I want to say just a word or two in greeting you on what his career and the career of his descendants should mean in our American life of to-day. I have known Underhills all my life, on land and on water—bankers, lawyers, storekeepers, farmers, carpenters, black- smiths, captains of oyster boats, fishermen, pilots—men of every calling and occupation. They have served well in the army ; they have served well in times of peace. The founder of the family here was a good soldier and a good citizen, and the Underhills of to-day have furnished their full quota of good soldiers and good citizens in their turn. If they had not, I would not have been here,— I have no use whatever for the man with nothing but a pedigree, the man the best part of whom is under ground. I believe in the pride of ancestry, but only if it takes the form of making the man or woman try to carry himself or herself well as regards the duties of to-day. If at the time of the Civil War you, Mr. Chairman, had felt that the fact that the original Captain Under- hill was a fighter excused you from fighting, I should have thought mighty little of you. The thing to So is to feel (and I guess you, comrade, over there—I mean the man with the Grand Army button—you will agree with me) that if you had ancestors who did their duty it is doubly incumbent on you to do your duty. I have known any number of Underhills in every walk of life, men who made their living in many different ways—men belonging to the professions, men who followed the sea, men who tilled the soil, men of means, men who made each day's living by that day's work with their bands—and all of them decent citizens. I won't say that there are not some Underhills who are not decent, but fortunately I have not met them. Now if there is one lesson that we here in America ought con- tinually to keep before us, it is our substantial oneness, our substantial unity as a people ; and one of the best ways to exemplify that is by just such a family gathering as this. If the family has been long enough in the land, why you will find its representatives in every walk of life ; you will find them filling all kinds of occupations ; you will find them as capitalists and wage-workers, farmers, mechanics, professional men, every- thing ; and the essential point to remember is that each one is entitled to the fullest and heartiest respect if he does his duty well in the position in life in which he happens to find himself. That is sound American doctrine. I should not much care to attend an Underhill gathering that was limited to capitalist Underhills, nor yet one limited to Underhill wage-workers ; but I am glad to attend one where every one conies in on the basis of decent American citizenship, each standing ruggedly on his own feet as a man should. The same thing that applies to you Under- hills here applies to the rest of us who are not Underhills in the country at large. We have made this country what it is partly because we have measurably succeeded in securing in the past equality of opportunity here. That is very different from equality of reward. I believe emphatically in doing everything that can
be done by law or otherwise to keep the avenues of occupation, of employment, of work, of interest, so open that there shall be, so far as it is humanly possible to achieve it, a measurable equality of opportunity—equality of opportunity for each man to show the stuff that is in him. But when it comes to reward, let him get what by his energy, foresight, intelligence, thrift,
courage, he is able to get with the opportunity open. I don't believe in coddling any one : I would no more permit the strong to oppress the weak than tell a weak man or a vicious man that he ought by rights to have the reward due only to the man who actually earns it. Very properly we in this country set our faces against privilege.
"There can be no grosser example of privilege than that set before us as an ideal by certain Socialistic writers—the ideal that every man shall put into the common fund what he can, which would mean what he chose, and should take out whatever he wanted; in other words, this theory is that the man who is vicious, foolish, a drag on the whole community, who contributes less than his share to the common good, should take out what is not his, what he has not earned; that he shall rob his neighbour of what that neighbour has earned. This particular Socialistic ideal would be to enthrone privilege in one of its grossest, crudest, most dishonest, most harmful, and most unjust forms. Equality of opportunity to render service,—yes, I will do every- thing I can to bring it about. Equality of reward,—no, unless there is also equality of service. If the service is equal, let the reward be equal, but let the reward depend on the service. And mankind being composed as it is, there will be inequality of service for a long time to come, no matter how great the equality of opportunity may be, and just so long as there is inequality of service it is eminently desirable that there should be inequality of reward.
"But in securing a measurable equality of opportunity, let us no more be led astray by the doctrinaire advocates of a lawless and destructive Individualism than by the doctrinaire advocates of a deadening Socialism. As society progresses and grows more complex, it becomes desirable to do many things for the common good by common effort. No empirical line can be laid down as to where and when such common effort by the whole community should supplant or supplement private and individual effort.
Each case must be judged on its own merits. Similarly, when a private or corporate fortune of vast size is turned to a business use which jeopardises the welfare of all the small men, then in the interest of everybody, in the interest of true individualism, the collective or common power of the community must be exercised to control and regulate for the common good this
business use of vast wealth ; and while doing this we must make it evident that we frown upon envy and malice exactly as we frown upon arrogance and oppression.
"You see, Domini% you let yourself in for a little sermon when you came here. I did not intend to speak as much. I want to thank you for having given me the chance to come over and meet my fellow-Long Islanders, my neighbours, my fellow-citizens."
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