In 1898 came the war with Spain. While both parties lent their aid in Congress and there was an outburst of patriotism in all sections, the war, for which we were so little prepared, had to be conducted by the Republican Party. Whatever efficiency was displayed in its maintenance was due to that party, and the ability with which it could meet a new issue. After the Spanish War, comparatively so short and bloodless in its extent, there have developed national questions for settlement of greater importance than any save those of the great Civil War. The Republican Party has marched up to their solution with the same courage, the same skill and the same persistence that it has shown in respect to all the questions arising in its history. After peace with Spain was signed, Congress left to McKinley to pioneer in respect to the government of Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines, imposing only as to the Cuban policy the condition that there should be an early date for turning over that island to the people of Cuba in accordance with the self-denying ordinance known as the Teller resolution. Congress did not interfere in the Philippines for a full four years, and in that time McKinley had worked out a policy which substantially received the full confirmation of Congress and to which the Republican Party is today pledged. The policy of expansion is what distinguishes the administration of McKinley and adds another to the list of patriotic victories of the Republican Party. By this policy the United States has become a world power. In the course of it we have built up a navy, not large enough as yet, but large enough to be respectable and to make our influence felt for peace and good international morals the world over.
In every one of these policies which I have thus enumerated-in the war of the Union-the building up and protection of the Negro race with the war amendments-in the maintenance of the sacredness of our promises to pay contained in the greenbacks and in the national bonds-in our maintenance of the national integrity by an adherence to the gold standard and a refusal to enter upon the free coinage of silver-in the support of a policy of protection under which our manufactures and our farm productions have found a prosperity never before known in the world-in the policy of expansion and the development of the unfortunate peoples intrusted to our care by providence-and in our progress toward world-wide influence-we have encountered the official and persistent opposition of the Democratic Party. At times we have been beaten. Only twice, however, in all that remarkable history of 48 years have we lost the confidence of the people of the United States to the point of their turning over the government to a Democratic executive. I venture to say that neither in this nor any other country can be disclosed such a remarkable record of arduous deeds done as in that history of a half a century of the Republican Party...
During the present administration the Republican Party has been called again to meet a great national need and to save the country from a growing danger. In the enormous industrial development and the accumulation of capital due to the combination in corporate form of the wealth of the country, there have arisen abuses which have threatened to undermine our whole business fabric. The intense desire for gain, stimulated by the prospect of enormous profits, produced a reckless spirit with reference to the methods of acquisition. Official investigations have disclosed a lack of business integrity on the part of some charged in a fiduciary capacity with the custody and management of great accumulations of capital. Other official investigations showed the eagerness with which certain industrial combinations were willing to use their patronage to induce or compel railroad companies to grant to them unjust and secret discriminations and rebates. The fact that the Interstate Commerce law was violated with perfect impunity became known to the public at large, and a conviction seized the people that there were many engaged in the management of corporate wealth who regarded the statutes of their country as dead letters and themselves as a privileged class. Their corrupting influence in politics and in respect of state and national legislation was naturally becoming greater and greater as their wealth grew and their associations spread. We were passing into a regime of an irresponsible plutocracy. During the last four years there has been a great moral awakening to this danger among the people and a popular demand that the lawbreakers-no matter how wealthy or high or powerful their position-shall be made to suffer. Under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt the Republican Party has not faltered in its determination to meet the requirements of this situation and to enact such legislation as may be necessary to bring to a close this period of illegitimate corporate immunity...
In the midst of this reform movement for the elimination from our business methods of illegal monopoly and discrimination, our country has been visited by a severe financial panic. The panic was doubtless chiefly due to the exhausting of the free capital of the world by reason of the over-investment in enterprises that have not been as productive as expected. The enormous industrial expansion had at last tied up nearly all the world's capital which was available and the new investments had to halt. This result was world-wide. In addition to this general condition, the revelations concerning the management of a number of our large corporations affected the confidence of European investors in our whole business fabric. Then our monetary system is not of such an elastic nature as to meet the emergency produced by sudden fright on the part of the holders of money, who withdraw it from business uses and hoard it against disaster. The result has been an industrial depression which we all hope and believe from the conditions prevailing will be of short duration. But those who have been made to feel the lash of public criticism by the moral awakening have been quick to seize upon and hold up the panic as a result of the measures taken or agitated to stamp out corporate abuses and illegality, and they have not been slow most unjustly to attack the Republican administration, and Mr. Roosevelt at its head, as the responsible authors of this industrial depression. There are those who have been members of the Republican Party who differ with Mr. Roosevelt in respect to the proper course to be taken in stamping out these abuses of corporate wealth. The great bulk of the Republican Party, however, stands solidly at his back in the work which he and the representatives of the parry in Congress are doing.
His recent message, urging the reenactment of the employers' liability act, which, because of bungling language, was declared unconstitutional, and asking additional power for the interstate commerce commission, has given rise in certain quarters to much criticism. I have read the message with care, and I am bound to say that the measures which he recommends to Congress, and the position he takes with respect to them, are all of a most conservative character...
The message contains an answer to the charges made that the administration is responsible for the industrial depression which has followed: and the sharpness and emphasis with which this unfounded attack is met have heartened the great body of the people as by a bugle call to renewed support of the policies of the administration.
From beginning to the end the message shows his earnest desire to protect the honest business man and the honest laborer, and to secure to them the possibility of living under an equal administration of the law. He would not destroy or injure the stock of innocent holders for value though it had its inception in the machinations of unprincipled promoters; but he would make the law to prevent a recurrence of such methods. He takes the utmost pains to point out that railroads should be relieved from the restrictions of the anti-trust law, and that that law should be amended so as to give greater freedom for corporate action in combinations that are not hurtful to the public. No man can find within the four corners of the message anything to shake in the slightest the guaranties of life, liberty and property secured by the constitution. The measures he recommends, and the positions that he takes, are in accord with the conservative position of the Republican Party which has ever looked upon the right of property as only less sacred than the right of liberty, and which has ever made the goal of all its efforts the equal protection of the laws...
The Republican Party follows the administration upon this social and moral reform-approves its attitude in favor of vested rights, of maintaining the power of the courts, of rendering more equal by legislation the basis of dealing between employer and employee, of strengthening the regulative power over railroads and other interstate corporations, and of prosecuting those lawbreakers who continue to defy public opinion. Roosevelt leads his party as Lincoln led his-as McKinley led his-to meet the new issues presented, to arm our present civilization, and fit it with a bold front to resist the attacks of socialism, and to transmit to the coming generations unharmed the great institutions of civil liberty inherited for our fathers.
