Cortland Evening Standard, Monday, September 17, 1900.
ROOSEVELT'S LETTER.
Formally Accepts Vice Presidential Nomination.
DEALS WITH IMPERIALISM.
McKinley's Policy In the Philippines Is Compared to the Expansion Acts of Other Presidents, and the Matter Is Thoroughly Reviewed.
WASHINGTON. Sept. 17.—The letter of Governor Roosevelt formally accepting the nomination for vice president was made public last night. In substance it is as follows:
Sir—I accept the nomination as vice president of the United States, tendered me by the Republican national convention, with a very deep sense of the honor conferred upon me and with an infinitely deeper sense of the vital importance to the whole country of securing the re-election of President McKinley. The nation's welfare is at stake. We must continue the work which has been so well begun during the present administration. We must show in a fashion incapable of being misunderstood that the American people, at the beginning of the twentieth century, face their duties in a calm and serious spirit; that they have no intention of permitting folly or lawlessness to mar the extraordinary material well-being which they have attained at home, nor yet of permitting their flag to be dishonored abroad.
I feel that this contest is by no means one merely between Republicans and Democrats. We have a right to appeal to all good citizens who are far-sighted enough to see what the honor and the interest of the nation demand. To put into practice the principles embodied in the Kansas City platform would mean grave disaster to the nation; for that platform stands for reaction and disorder; for an upsetting of our financial system which would mean not only great suffering but the abandonment of the nation's good faith; and for a policy abroad which would imply the dishonor of the flag and an unworthy surrender of our national rights. Its success would mean unspeakable humiliation to men proud, of their country, jealous of their country's good name, and desirous of securing the welfare of their fellow citizens. Therefore we have a right to appeal to all good men, North and South, East and West, whatever their politics may have been in the past, to stand with us, because we stand for the prosperity of the country and for the renown of the American flag.
Problem of Trusts.
One of the serious problems with which we are confronted under the conditions of our modern industrial civilization is that presented by the great business combinations, which are generally known under the name of trusts.
The problem is an exceedingly difficult one and the difficulty is immensely aggravated both by honest but wrongheaded attacks on our whole industrial system in the effort to remove some of the evils connected with it, and by the mischievous advice of men who either think crookedly or who advance remedies knowing them to be ineffective, but deeming that they may, by darkening counsel, achieve for themselves a spurious reputation for wisdom.
No good whatever is subserved by indiscriminate denunciation of corporations generally, and of all forms of industrial combination in particular; and when this public denunciation is accompanied by private membership in the great corporations denounced, the effect is, of course, to give an air of insincerity to the whole movement. Nevertheless, there are real abuses, and there is ample reason for striving to remedy these abuses. A crude or ill-considered effort to remedy them would either be absolutely without effect or else would simply do damage.
The first thing to do is to find out the facts; and for this purpose publicity as to capitalization, profits, and all else of importance to the public, is the most useful measure. The mere fact of this publicity would in itself remedy certain evils, and as to the others, it would in some cases point out the remedies and would at least enable us to tell whether or not certain proposed remedies would be useful. The state acting in its collective capacity would thus first find out the facts and then be able to take such measures as wisdom dictated. Much can be done by taxation. Even more can he done by regulation, by close supervision, and the unsparing excision of all unhealthy, destructive and anti-social elements. The separate state governments can do a great deal; and where they decline to co-operate the national government steps in.
Our Duty as a Nation.
While paying heed to the necessity of keeping our house in order at home, the American people can not, if they wish to retain their self respect, refrain from doing their duty as a great nation in the world. The history of the nation is in large part the history of the nation's expansion. When the first constitutional congress met at Liberty hall and the thirteen original states declared themselves a nation, the westward limit of the country was marked by the Alleghany mountains. Even during the Revolutionary war the work of expansion went on. Kentucky, Tennessee and the great Northwest, then known as the Illinois country, were conquered from our white and Indian foes during the Revolutionary struggle and were confirmed to us by the treaty of peace in 1783. Yet the land thus confirmed was not then given to us. It was held by an alien foe until the army under General Anthony Wayne freed Ohio from the red man, while the treaties of Jay and Pinckney secured from the Spanish and British Natchez and Detroit. The doctrine that the "constitution follows the flag" was not then considered either by Jefferson or any other serious party leader for it never entered their heads that a new territory should be governed other than in the way in which the territories of Ohio and Illinois had already been governed under Washington and the elder Adams; the theory known by this utterly false and misleading phase was only struck out in political controversy at a much later date, for the sole purpose of justifying the extension of slavery into the territories.
The parallel between what Jefferson did with Louisiana and what is now being done in the Philippines is exact. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and of the "consent of the governed" doctrine, saw no incongruity between this and the establishment of a government on common sense grounds in the new territory; and he railed at the sticklers for an impossible application of his principle, saying, in language which at the present day applies to the situation in the Philippines without the change of a word, "though it is acknowledged that our new fellow citizens are as yet incapable of self-government as children, yet some can not bring themselves to suspend its principles for a single moment." He intended that ultimately self-government should be introduced throughout the territory, but only as the different parts became fit for it, and no sooner. This is just the policy that has been pursued. In no part of the Louisiana purchase was complete self-government introduced for a number of years; in one part of it, the Indian territory, it has not yet been introduced, although nearly a century has elapsed. Over enormous tracts of it, including the various Indian reservations, with a territory in the aggregate as large as that of the Philippines, the constitution has never yet followed the flag; the army officer and the civilian agent still exercise authority, without asking the "consent of the governed." We must proceed in the Philippines with the same wise caution, taking each successive step as it becomes desirable, and accommodating the details of our policy to the peculiar needs of the situation. But as soon as the present revolt is put down and order established, it will undoubtedly be possible to give to the islands a larger measure of self-government than Jefferson originally gave Louisiana.
Seminoles Like Filipinos.
The next step in expansion was the acquisition of Florida. This was partly acquired by conquest and partly by purchase, Andrew Jackson being the most prominent figure in the acquisition. As in the case of the Philippines, Florida was acquired by purchase from Spain, and in Florida the Seminoles, who had not been consulted in the sale, rebelled and waged war exactly as some of the Tagals have rebelled and waged war in the Philippines. The Seminole war lasted for many years, but Presidents Monroe, Adams and Jackson declined for a moment to consider the question of abandoning Florida to the Seminoles, or to treat their non-consent to the government of the United States as a valid reason for turning over the territory to them.
Our next acquisition of territory was that of Texas, secured by treaty after it had been wrested from the Mexicans by the Texans themselves. Then came the acquisition of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and parts of Colorado and Utah as the result of the Mexican war, supplemented five years later by the Gadsden purchase.
The next acquisition was that of Alaska, secured from Russia by treaty and purchase, nearly thirty years passed before the next instance of expansion occurred, which was over the island of Hawaii. An effort was made at the end of President Harrison's administration to secure the annexation of Hawaii. The effort was unsuccessful. Hawaii has now been annexed and her delegates have sat in the national conventions of the two great parties.
Properly speaking, the question is now not whether we shall expand—for we have already expanded—but whether we shall contract. The Philippines are now part of American territory. To surrender them would be to surrender American territory. They must, of course, be governed primarily in the interests of their own citizens. Our first care must be for the people of the islands which have come under our guardianship as a result of the most righteous foreign war that has been waged within the memory of the present generation. They must be administered in the interests of their inhabitants, and that necessarily means that any question of personal or partisan politics in their administration must be entirely eliminated.
Incapable of Self-Government.
It must be remembered always that governing these islands in the interest of the inhabitants may not necessarily be to govern them as the inhabitants at the moment prefer. To grant self-government to Luzon under Aguinaldo would be like granting self-government to an Apache reservation under some local chief; and this is no more altered by the fact that the Filipinos fought the Spaniards, than it would be by the fact that Apaches have long been trained and employed in the United States army and have rendered signal service therein; just as the Pawnees did under the administration of President Grant; just as the Stockbridge Indians did in the days of General Washington, and the friendly tribes of the Six Nations in the days of President Madison.
There is every reason why as rapidly as an Indian, or any body of Indians, becomes fit for self-government, he or it should be granted the fullest equality with the whites; but there would be no justification whatever in treating this fact as a reason for abandoning the wild tribes to work out their own destruction. Exactly the same reason applies to the case of the Philippines.
To turn over the islands to Aguinaldo and his followers would not be to give self-government to the islanders; under no circumstances would the majority thus gain self-government. They would simply be put at the mercy of a syndicate of Chinese half-breeds, under whom corruption would flourish far more freely than ever it flourished under Tweed, while tyrannical oppression would obtain to a degree only possible under such an oligarchy.
Yours truly,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
AFFAIRS IN PEKIN.
Allies Have Stopped All Looting and Are Encouraging Chinese to Work.
PEKIN, Sept. 11, via Taku, Sept. 14.—The allied generals were in conference four hours today, the principal topic being how to encourage the Chinese to return to work. It was agreed that looting should cease and that foraging parties should hereafter be accompanied by an officer, who should give receipts for all supplies taken.
The question of wintering at Tien Tsin was brought up, with a view of ascertaining, if possible, the attitude of the Russians. General Linevitch admitted that most of his troops would winter there.
At the Japanese legation it is not believed that the man who claims to have killed Baron von Ketteler is the actual criminal. The Japanese believe that he has been paid to accuse himself by the Russians, in order to discredit Prince Ching. The Japanese favor Prince Ching and the Russians Li Hung Chang.
The Sixth United States cavalry will leave tomorrow for the western hills, where is located the summer house of the United States legation.
Two thousand Germans under General Hoepfner have left for Siang-Hsang (Liang-Hiang?), a walled city occupied by Boxers, who recently attacked a party of German soldiers. The city has one gun.
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| William Jennings Bryan. |
PAGE TWO—EDITORIALS.
The Dollar Above the Man.
Mr. Bryan delights to talk about greed and commercialism and the putting the dollar above the man. This kind of talk may be very well for Mr. Bryan who gets $600 for an hour's speech. But for the laboring man who works all day for a dollar or two it means everything that those dollars are worth 100 cents and will buy 100 cents worth of goods, groceries, coal, house rent. It might seem less astonishing in the mouth of a college professor, sure of his job for life and addressing an audience of well-to-do Mugwumps who find their chief pleasure and business in assuming an air of superiority to the work-a-day world. These are gentlemen who have no command of facts but take great delight in insisting upon their principles. The facts are liable to be more effective.
Here are Bryan and the other tenants of the Democratic cave of the winds, going up and down in the land, and warning the farmers, the laborers, the mechanics, the clerks, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker not to put the dollar above the man. Meanwhile, must not a clear-headed man think something like this, perhaps?
"I do put the dollar above any man who will make it harder for me to earn one. Your friend Aguinaldo may be a great and good man, but I'd rather hurt him than hurt myself. The country is well off and I'd well off. I want them both to stay so. I am a base commercialist myself. I prefer good times to bad and a panic among the Tagalogs to a panic in the United States. As for imperialism, I tell you frankly that I don't care a plugged penny for it. You say it's paramount; I say it's no account. You can't scare me with it. Remember all the terrible things you said were going to happen if you were not elected in 1896. It was money in my pocket to have you beaten then. It will be money in my pocket to have you beaten next November, and I'm going to help do it."
We fear that Mr. Bryan will come to think that this is a selfish sordid country. It will not injure itself for the sake of boosting him and Aguinaldo. Altruria is the place for him.
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| Jacob Gould Schurman. |
President Schurman on the Philippines.
President Schurman of Cornell university, who has been in the Philippines and knows what he is talking about, puts the situation as follows: "You cannot turn the Philippine Islands over to the Filipino people, because there is no Filipino people, but only a medley of fourscore different tribes and races who cannot understand one another's speech and who occupy different places in the scale of civilization and barbarism. The Kansas City platform advocates first of all the establishment of a stable government in the Philippines. That is what the McKinley administration has been doing. When this is fully accomplished the next step will be to train the Filipinos in the ways of self government. And already the McKinley administration is preparing to give them all the liberty and home rule their different communities are capable of exercising. The issue of imperialism will prove as fruitless against McKinley's Philippine policy as it was against Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana in 1803."
Against such a plain statement of facts as that the Bryanists can only howl about "the consent of the governed," a theory which they won't and can't explain.
DEATH WAS A WARNING.
Other Ambassadors Did not Start after Von Ketteler's Death.
NEW YORK, Sept. 17.—Baroness Von Ketteler leaves for Germany via America to-morrow, cables The Herald correspondent at Pekin under date of Sept. 5. The murder of her husband on June 19 by government soldiers in the main street prevented a general massacre of all foreigners in Pekin as all the foreign ministers except Baron Von Ketteler had decided to accept a Chinese assurance of protection for their journey to Tien Tain. It is now known that Prince Tuan had arranged for their annihilation enroute.
RECEIVER APPOINTED.
C. A. A. Reduces Its Indebtedness and Ceases to Exist—Some of Its History.
The Cortland Athletic association has gone into voluntary liquidation and Mr. H. J. Harrington has been appointed temporary receiver. The association's indebtedness is less than three hundred dollars and the apparatus and furniture belonging to the club will fully meet all claims.
The association was organized Dec. 7, 1893, and incorporated in 1895. Its first rooms were in the Gen. Roswell Randall house on Tompkins-st., and these quarters were opened Christmas day of the year of the organization. Field day sports and circuit races were held yearly under its auspices which did not always prove paying enterprises, and when in 1896 the club was transferred to the old Taylor hall an indebtedness of $800 had been incurred. Some of this was for starting the club, but the most of it was for losses at the field day sports, due mostly to inclement weather, which generally greeted these days. On June 17, 1897, the association had made great and expensive preparations for holding a circuit bicycle race, at which large cash prizes were given. About 1 o'clock of the afternoon of the day of the races, a hard rain storm came on and prevented the sports, and as a result the club sunk several hundred dollars. The club was removed to Taylor hall in order that a revenue might be realized from renting the hall, and so pay off the $800 indebtedness. The enterprise proved successful, for this [debt] has been reduced to less than $300. It was understood when the change of rooms was made that the association would hold together only so long as it might take to reduce the indebtedness to where the belongings of the association would finish paying the old debt. This time has come and the association has taken the step. The organization has seen many grand functions and gay festival occasions, and its passing will bring to mind many incidents connected with the sporting life of Cortland during the past few years.
THE LAND SALE ON SATURDAY.
Another Sale Next Saturday—Plots for Farms to be Sold.
The Smith Realty company's land sale on the plot obtained from the Traction company east of the city last Saturday was the same great success that it has been on previous weeks. Six carloads of adults left the Messenger House at 1:55 o'clock accompanied by the City band and hundreds more were on hand at the scene of the sale, having come on foot or by private conveyance. Silverware in great abundance was given away, and this held the crowd till the last lot was sold. Twenty lots were disposed of; the highest price obtained was $65; and the lowest $20.
Next Saturday a new scheme is on foot. The Smith Realty company has secured from the Traction company a section from the farm which was bought at the same time with the park. It is what is known as the Salisbury farm. The project is to cut this up into plots of two and five acres and sell these without reserve to the highest bidder in the same way as before, free silverware and all. The survey will be made this week and the plots staked off. The first section to be sold will be lots fronting on the Salisbury hill road and extending up the hill to the east, beginning at the corner of this road and the one which goes to the top of the hill to the Bolles and Wells farms. This will be a good opportunity for people to secure at a moderate price a little land for farming in a small way. One can thus get it in two or five acre plots, or if one wishes to buy adjoining plots, more can be secured.
Selling off the Stock.
Owing to the severe drouth and short hay crop a farmer residing in the southeastern part of the town of Truxton has sold for $2 per head his flock of fine Southdown and Leicester sheep for which two years ago he paid $5.25 per head. He thought this would be better than to attempt to winter them.
Another well-to-do farmer informed a STANDARD man, that he had purchased two first class milch cows in February for $70 each. Last week he sold them for $40 each, rather than pay $20 per ton for hay and carry them through the winter.
Work on the Cobb Block.
The woodwork on the Cobb block, Railroad-st., was begun this morning. The rear half of the first-floor will be raised two feet to match the floor of the adjoining store which Cobb & Co. occupy. Large doors will connect each floor of the new building with the corresponding floor in the other, and the present elevator will be used for both buildings.
Died in Groton City.
Mrs. Augusta E. Kirk, widow of Mr. James Kirk, died at her home near Groton City at about noon yesterday, Mrs. Kirk leaves three small children. The funeral will be held to-morrow forenoon from the house at 9:30, and from the Congregational church in Groton City at 10 o'clock.
BREVITIES.
—A regular meeting of Grover Post will be held at G. A. R. hall this evening at 7:30 sharp.
—The census shows that there are about 25,000 more women than men in Greater New York.
—A fresh invoice of McKinley and Roosevelt pictures has been received at Republican headquarters and they are ready for distribution.
—Beard & Peck's prospective wedding couple for the Dryden fair will arrive in Cortland to-morrow night and start the next morning for Dryden, where they will be wed on the grounds.
—New display advertisements to-day are—A. S. Burgess Hu-man-ic shoes, page 8; Warren, Tanner & Co., Golf capes, page 4; C. F. Brown, Good medicines, page 8; Grand Republican rally, page 4.
—The thirty-second annual convention of the New York State Woman Suffrage association will be held at Glenn Falls, Oct. 20 to Nov. 1. All Political Equality clubs of the state are invited to send delegates.
—A very showy as well as artistic sign has been placed over the front of the west side of the Mahan block, bearing the inscription, "Republican Headquarters." The sign was the product of the brush of "Murph" the sign painter.
—There were rumors afloat Saturday afternoon that a destructive fire was raging in Dryden. Inquiry by telephone developed the fact that the grass in a swamp near Dryden was on fire, but it was soon extinguished and no particular damage was done.
—The Saturday evening social sings at the Y. M. C. A. rooms were resumed last Saturday evening, and about thirty-five young men spent an hour very pleasantly in the parlors. Two of the number furnished several piano duets that were much enjoyed.
—The young people's societies of the different churches in Cortland will hold receptions this week for the Normal students. The Epworth league of the First M. E. church will lead off to-night by entertaining Normal students and their friends at the church parlors from 8 to 10 o'clock.
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