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�John Stagg < j s 5 h @ unix.mail.virginia.edu>
11/20/98 09:14:24 AM
Record Type:
To:
Record
Joshua S. Gottheimer/WHO/EOP
Subject: Re: state union
v
{\.\
^ / ^ ^
^\
Dear Mr Gottheimer:
In 1987 Jim Hutson (of the Library of Congress) published a
supplement to Max Farrand's "Records of the Federal Convention."
It contains an index w i t h references, on a clause by clause
basis, for all aspects of the Constitution that were debated and
for which some records, or notes, of those debates that have
survived. The entries for Article II, section 3, however, turned
up no references to any debate or discussion about the
president's role in reporting to Congress on the state of the
Union, or his role in sending messages to Congress from time to
time. From that we might assume that these particular
presidential functions were not the subject of any controversy in
the Federal Convention.
Sincerely yours,
J.C.A. Stagg
�Annual Messages of the Presidents:
Major Themes of American History
by A R T H U R
M. S C H L E S I N G E R , J R .
* • •
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to
their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge
necessary and expedient . . .
The Constitution of the United States
Article I I , Section 3
The provision enjoining the President to inform the Congress regarding the state of the American Union and to submit programs and
policies to congressional consideration evidently struck the Constitutional Convention as entirely obvious and sensible. It provoked no recorded debate; as Hamilton wrote later in the 77th Federalist, "No
objection has been made to this class of authorities; nor could they possibly admit of any." Yet these innocuous phrases conferred on the
American President what has become, after vicissitudes, a basic tool in
his management of Congress and a potent instrument of national
leadership.
The Annual Message, as it was called through most of American
history, or the State of the Union Message, as it has been known since
1945, owed its origin to the first President of the republic. Washington,
indeed, had even directed his First Inaugural Address to his "FellowCitizens of the Senate and the House of Representatives" (all subsequent inaugural addresses were directed to the nation as a whole); and
he followed this by the practice of appearing personally each year before
the Congress and offering his account of national problems and|
prospects. The Houses of Congress made formal responses to the Presi-'
dent, and each such response in due course received formal presidential
acknowledgment.
This ritual derived from the British practice of opening Parlia-
r•
�XIV
INTRODUCTION
ment with "a speech from the throne"—a precedent which did not
escape the notice of the zealously Republican party of Jefferson and
Madison. When the Republicans won the Presidency after twelve years,
Jefferson, coming to office in 1801, resolved to suppress what he con\
sidered a quasi-monarchical ceremony; he planned, as he liked to say,
to "put the ship of state on its republican tack." The shift of the seat
ol government from Philadelphia to Washington seemed to provide a
pretext, even if John Adams had been able.to negotiate the muddy pas' sage from the White House to the Capitol to deliver his Fourth Message in 1800. In any case, Jefferson a year later notified the President of
the Senate, "The circumstances under which we find ourselves at this
place rendering inconvenient the mode heretofore practiced of making, by personal address, the first communications between the legislative and executive branches, I have adopted that by message." In doing
this, Jefferson explained, he had principal regard "to the convenience
of the Legislature, to the economy of their time, to their relief from the
embarrassment of immediate answers, on subjects not yet fully before
them, and to the benefits thence resulting to the public affairs." He
added other explanations privately. "By sending a message, instead of
making a speech at the opening oi the session," he told one friend, " I
have prevented the bloody conflict which the making an answer woidd
have committed them. They consequently were able to set into real
business at once." Above all, he confided to another, his "great anxiety"
was "to avail ourselves of our ascendancy to establish good principles
and good practices; to fortify republicanism behind as many barriers
as possible, that the outworks may give time to rally and save the
citadel."
One inevitable effect of Jefferson's repudiation of Washington's
precedent was to change the character of the Annual Message—and to
set in motion its decay as a literary form. Under the first two Presidents
the Message had been shaped and disciplined by the necessities of personal delivery. Though neither Washington nor Adams had pretensions
as orators, their addresses nonetheless were composed with some care,
were relatively coherent in structure and agreeably brief in text, and
reflected and conveyed the presidential personalities. At the same time,
they set the canon, passing on to future Presidents a set of standard
genuflections: pious expressions of "profound gratitude to the Author
of all Good for the numerous and extraordinary blessings we enjoy";
self-congratulatory statements about the national condition—"Is it too
much to say that our country exhibits a spectacle of national happiness
never surpassed, if ever equaled?"; and a methodical review of outstanding national issues. The next Presidents kept up the standards of
the Messages for a while: Jefferson through literary grace and philo-
�INTRODUCTION
XV
sophical force; Madison through intellectual cogency; Monroe through
the direct promulgation of policy (as in his celebrated Doctrine); John
Quincy Adams through sweeping national vision; Jackson through
bold executive initiative. But in time the Message became increasingly
a peifunctory and bureaucratic document, made up of submissions
from the executive departments lightly bound together by the passages
of piety and self-congratulation.
Occasionally presidential preoccupations broke through and restored a personal tone and rhythm. So John Quincy Adams i n 1826
concluded his Message with a reminder that a few months before, on
the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, "two of the
principal actors in that solemn scene—the hand that penned the evermemorable Declaration and the voice that sustained it i n debate—were
by one summons, at the distance of 700 miles f r o m each other, called
before the Judge of A l l " ; one, of course, was Jefferson, the other his
own father. So Polk inserted into his Fourth Message i n 1848 an extraordinary historical analysis and indictment of the American System
of Adams and Clay. So Pierce in his Fourth Message i n 1856 made a
comprehensive and impassioned formulation of the case against the
agitation of the slavery question. So Buchanan's messages from "an old
public functionary" on the eve of the Civil War expressed the anguished helplessness of those who could bring themselves neither to
approve nor arrest the d r i f t toward disunion. So the war itself inspired
Lincoln to the highest eloquence of all Annual Messages.
After the war Andrew Johnson delivered himself of bitter complaints about the policies of reconstruction; Grant in his final Message
issued a pathetic defense of his stewardship ("Mistakes have been made,
as all can see and I admit, but it seems to me oftener in the selections
made of assistants appointed to aid in carrying out the various duties of
administering the Government—in nearly every case selected without
a personal acquaintance with the appointee, but upon recommendations of the representatives chosen directly by the people"); Cleveland
poured out in moving language his sense of the moral decline of the
nation; Theodore Roosevelt set forth with ardor and insight the need
for national regulation of an industrial and urban economy. And from
time to time Presidents stuck pet personal ideas of their own into their
Messages: Jackson's proposal to abolish the electoral college ancl limit
tlie President to a single term of four or six years; Andrew Johnson's
desire for the direct election of senators as well as of Presidents and for
the limitation of the terms of federal judges; Grant's support for the
item veto (renewed by Arthur and again by Eisenhower); Arthur's wish
(renewed by Cleveland) to clarify the question of presidential disability; Theodore Roosevelt's appeal for government subsidization of
�XVI
INTRODUCTION
political campaigns, for a national divorce law and for capital punishment for rape; Taft's interest in giving cabinet members seats i n each
house of Congress and roles in congressional debates.
The day after Wilson's election i n 1912 Oliver Newman, the chief
editorial writer for the Washington Times, suggested to h i m that he
restore the practice of the early republic and deliver his Annual Messages in person. Wilson at first rejected this idea; he feared i t was too
radical and woidd shock the Congress. Yet it was a logical development
of his own philosophy of presidential leadership and, on reflection, he
changed his mind. "Today I break another precedent by reading my
message to Congress i n person," he wrote a friend on A p r i l 8, 1913.
"The town is agog about it. It seems I have been smashing precedents
almost daily ever since I got here, chiefly no doubt because I did not
know how it had been the custom to do and was not particularly caref u l to inquire, and proceeded to do it in the most simple and natural
way—which is always and everywhere contrary to precedent. T h e President has not addressed Congress i n person since John Adams's day—
and yet what [could be] more natural and dignified? A n d a President is
likely to read his own message rather better than a clerk would."
The announcement of this intention produced an excited senatorial
reaction. " I am sorry to see revived the old Federalistic custom of
speeches from the throne," said Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi. " . . . I regret this cheap and tawdry imitation of English
royalty." Rather than risk debate over a resolution of unanimous consent for a joint session to hear the address, the Vice President quickly
pronounced it a question of "high privilege on which unanimous consent was not required." When Wilson arrived i n the Capitol, the atmosphere was tense. "Members of Congress," one cabinet member later
wrote, "appeared to be a trifle nervous . . . Some . . . had a sullen
look." Wilson began calmly:
/ am very glad indeed to have this opportunity
to address the two Houses directly and to verify for myself the impression tliat the Fresident of the United States is a person,
not a mere department of the Government
liailijig Congress
from some isolated island of jealous power, sending messages, not speaking nalurally and with his own voice—that
he is a human being trying to cooperate with other
human
beings in a common service. After this pleasant experience 1
shall feel quite normal in all our dealings xvith one another.
I
I
i
I
Ji-
1
�INTRODUCTION
XVII
iving home, Mrs. Wilson remarked to her husband that this was the
id of tiling Theodore Roosevelt would have loved to do " i f only he
d thought of it." Wilson replied with a laugh, "Yes, I think I put one
er on Teddy." Roosevelt's probable chagrin is unrecorded, but the
neral reaction was highly favorable. As for Oliver Newman, Wilson
June appointed him to the Board of Commissioners for the District
Columbia.
Though this first presidential return to the H i l l was for a special
:.'ssage, Wilson delivered his Annual Messages i n person every year
cept when illness prevented in 1919. His Republican successors folded this example only intermittently in the twenties (Harding twice,
)olidge once, Hoover not at all), but Washington's practice was noneeless reestablished. Franklin Roosevelt seized on the idea w i t h prectable relish, nor has any subsequent President foregone the oppornity to confront Congress face to face with his annual proposals. I t
safe to suppose that the age of television has now made the State of
e Union Message an occasion for national display which no future
esident will ever deny himself.
At the same time, Wilson brought about a revival of the Annual
essage as a literary form. He charged his own addresses with an easy
id lofty eloquence. " I have not so much laid before you a series of
commendations, gentlemen," as he put it i n his final Message, "as
light to utter a confession of faith." Harding gave his messages the
otund phraseology of a midwestem newspaper publisher, Coolidge's
ul a dry and engaging terseness, and even Hoover's were embellished
ith sententious statements of social and economic philosophy. W i t h
anklin Roosevelt, the Message became an oral address again and
quired in those skilled hands and with that golden voice new vitality
id power.
The adoption of the 20th Amendment in the Thirties meant that,
: those years when one President succeeded another by election, there
ould be two Annual Messages. Roosevelt therefore suggested i n 1937
iat "under this new constitutional practice" the retiring President
ould "review the existing state of our national affairs and outline
oad future problems, leaving specific recommendations for future
gislation to be made by the President about to be inaugurated." Since
oosevelt, this situation has arisen only twice. T r u m a n observed Roose•It's injunction by making his final message in 1953—one of the most
markable of all Annual Messages—in effect a farewell address. Eisen:)wer in 19(il, however, preferred to keep his final message relatively
mtine and, like Washington and Jackson, deliver a separate farewell
Jdress.
The 178 Annual Messages can by no means be relied on for a f u l l
ul exact record of the state of the Union. Most of the time, as devices
�XV111
INTRODUCTION
in the presidential management of Congress, they tended to employ the
rhetoric of consensus, seeking to minimize difTerences, to mollify opposition and to court support. Abrasive issues were often swathed and
submerged; thus one will look in vain in Monroe's Message of 1819
for mention of the question which would dominate that session of
Congress and result in the Missouri Compromise, any more than one
can find in Eisenhower's Messages any clear statement of his administration's policy of massive nuclear retaliation.
Yet, though sometimes in a muted and fitful way, major themes of
American history nevertheless emerge in these texts: the security of
the republic; the internal development of the continent; the place of
ethnic minorities; the evolution of presidential power; and the significance of the experiment in democratic government.
National security. The preservation of national independence was
the first necessity. The new republic wished to live at peace; but "if we
desire to secure peace," as Washington put it, ". . . it must be known
that we are at all times ready for war." The American people, he
warned, could not "indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the order of
human events, they will forever keep at a distance those painful appealsto arms with which the history of every other nation abounds." Peace
thus required a strong navy and a strong militia: "The safety of the
United States under divine protection ought to rest on the basis of
systematic and solid arrangements, exposed as little as possible to the
hazards of fortuitous circumstances." Nor could "such arrangements,
with such objects, be exposed to the censure or jealousy of the warmest
friends of republic government"; there was no incompatibility between
defense ancl democracy. The pacific Jefferson soon agreed; writing in
his First Message about Tripoli's requisitions on American commerce,
he laconically said, "The style of the demand admitted but one answer.
I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."
Peace also required a purposeful foreign policy. Safety lay in keeping out of power conflicts abroad. Like new states of Asia and Africa
struggling for survival two centuries later, the young American republic committed itself to the course of neutralism. "The connection of the
United States with Europe has become extremely interesting," said
Washington in a moment of understatement in his Fifth Message; and
his successors found themselves involved in harsh struggles to preserve
American nonalignment at a time when the Western world was split
into warring blocs. "We have seen with sincere concern," said Jefferson
in his Third Message, "the flames of war lighted up again in Europe,
�INTRODUCTION
XIX
and nations . . . engaged in mutual destruction." But America was
"separated by a wide ocean from the nations of Europe and from the
political interests which entangle them together," and Jefferson, emphasizing "the singular blessings of the position in which nature has
placed us," instructed his countrymen to look on "the bloody arena"
with total detachment. Even ideological sympathy could not be permitted to lead to political involvement. "That the people of the United
States should feel an interest in the spread of political institutions as
free as they regard their own to be is natural," said Van Buren in his
Second Message; but their becoming "a party to any such struggle" was
another matter.
This was true at least for Europe. The western hemisphere was a
different question. The national struggles for independence i n Latin
America caused Madison in his T h i r d Message to express a "deep interest" in "the great communities which occupy the southern portion of
our own hemisphere." "We can have no concern in the wars of the
European Governments nor in the causes which produce them," said
Monroe. "The balance of power between them, into whichever scale
it may turn in its various vibrations, cannot affect us. . . . But in regard to our neighbors our situation is different." The conviction that
"with the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected" led him to lay down his famous Doctrine in his
Seventh Message.
Slowly the horizon of foreign policy enlarged. In becoming a continental nation, the United States became a Pacific power. I n 1852 Fillmore complained that the office of commissioner to China remained
unfilled; everyone had declined "on the ground of the inadequacy of
the compensation. The annual allowance by law is |6,()()(), and there is
no provision for any outfit." But, as he insisted the next year, "The
general prosperity of our States on the Pacific requires that an attempt
be made to open the opposite regions of Asia to a mutually beneficial
intercourse." "The history of the world," added Buchanan, "proves
that the nation which has gained possession of the trade with eastern
Asia has always become wealthy and powerful." Soon the Far East fell
into the orbit of American diplomacy.
As for the United States itself, Madison in 181 (i had identified as
the "peculiar felicity" of the Constitution that it was capable, "without losing its vital energies, of expanding itself over a spacious territory." Such sentiments forecast the age of "manifest destiny." By the
Fifties, Pierce coidd reflect comfortably how the nation had "continued
gradually and steadily to expand through acquisitions of territory,
which how much soever some of them may have been questioned, are
now universally seen and admitted to have been wise." Soon Buchanan
called for the purchase of Cuba, and Johnson and Grant for the annexa-
�XX
INTRODUCTION
tion of San Domingo (which Grant wanted as a home for the ex-slaves
"where their civil rights would not be disputed").
But there were voices of caution. "Maintaining as I do," said Cleveland in his First Message, "the tenets of a line of precedents from
Washington's day, which proscribe entangling alliances with foreign
states, I do not favor a policy of acquisition of new and distant territory
or the incorporation of remote interests with our own" or, indeed, even
the assertion of national interest "outside of our own territory, when
coupled with absolute and unlimited engagements to defend the territorial integrity of the state where such interests lie."
Yet the world swept on. In 1899 McKinley justified the annexation
of the Philippines ("They are ours by every title of law and equity.
They cannot be abandoned. If we desert them we leave them at once to
anarchy and finally to barbarism"). Soon Theodore Roosevelt was explaining that "wars with barbarous or semi-barbarous peoples come in
a different category [from wars between civilized powers], being merely
a most regrettable but necessary international police duty which must
be performed for the sake of the welfare of mankind." Recent events,
Roosevelt declared, had "definitely decided lhat, for woe or for weal,
our place must be great among the nations. We may either fail greatly
or succeed greatly; but we cannot avoid the endeavor from which either
great failure or great success must come."
The old isolationism thus gave way, in the first instance, to the
new imperialism. "The diplomacy of the present administration," said
Taft in his Fourth Message, ". . . is an effort frankly directed to the
increase of American trade upon the axiomatic principle that the Government of the United States shall extend all proper support to every
legitimate and beneficial American enterprise abroad." But the old
isolationism was also beginning to be challenged by the new internationalism. The First World War led Wilson to his crusade for "a
peace secure against the violence of irresponsible monarchs and ambitious military coteries and made ready for a new order, for new foundations of justice and fair dealing." "No policy of isolation," he said in
his 1919 Message, "will satisfy the growing needs and opportunities
of America. . . . The recent war has ended our isolation and thrown
upon us a great duty and responsibility."
The debate nevertheless continued. "Our country," Coolidge announced in his First Message, "has one cardinal principle to maintain
in its foreign policy. . . . We attend to our own affairs." But would
this be enough? In a prescient Message thirteen years later Franklin
Roosevelt begged "the people of the Americas" to "take cognizance of
growing ill will, of marked trends toward aggression of increasing
armaments, of shortening tempers—a situation which has in it many of
the elements that lead to the tragedy of general war." What he then
�INTRODUCTION
XXI
called the "twin spirits of autocracy and aggression" brought on war
soon enough. I n 1941, noting that "at no previous time has American
security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today,"
Roosevelt set forth his Four Freedoms. Three years later, warning
against the "tragic errors of ostrich isolationism," he called on the freedom-loving nations to join " i n a just and durable system of peace."
The atomic age gave the quest for peace new urgency. "Lenin,"
said T r u m a n in his great Message of 1953, "was a pre-atomic man, who
viewed society and history with pre-atomic eyes. Something profound
has happened since he wrote. War has changed its shape and its dimension." Atomic war, he continued, "is not a possible policy for rational
man." (Eisenhower seven years later called it "the tdtimate insanity.")
" I do not know how much time may elapse before the Communist
rulers bring themselves to recogni/e this truth," T r u m a n added; but
he held out the hope that "as we continue to confound Soviet expectations, as our world grows stronger, more united, more attractive to men
on both sides of the iron curtain, then inevitably there w i l l come a time
of change within the Communist world. . . . I t is not too much to
expect their world to change its character, moderate its aims, become
more realistic and less implacable, and recede from the cold war." A
decade later Kennedy, noting that "the forces of diversity are at work
inside the Communist camp," could conclude that it was "the closed
Communist societies, not the free and open societies, which carry w i t h i n
themselves the seeds of internal disintegration." I f communism would
indeed moderate its aims, Kennedy suggested, "then, surely, the areas
of agreement can be very wide indeed."
Time and space had long since obliterated "the singular blessings
of the position in which nature has placed us." America was in the
great world to stay: it could not escape its destiny. "We seek," said
Kennedy, "not tlie worldwide victory of one nation or system but a
worldwide victory of men."
Internal development. " I t will not be doubted," said Washington
in his Message of 1790, "that with reference either to individual or
national welfare agriculture is of primary importance." More than a
century later Theodore Roosevelt could note lhat "nearly half the people of this country devote their energies to growing things from the
soil." Yet Washington in his First Message also stressed the importance
of "new and useful inventions," and the history of the next century
was the story of the cascading evolution of the United States from a
rural republic into an industrial as well as a continental society.
�XXII
INTRODUCTION
National growth required the settlement of the public lands and
the development of internal communications; it required the encouragement of manufactures; it required the promotion of education;
and for all such purposes it seemed to require an active national government. One is particularly impressed by the immediate recognition
by Presidents of the need for government support for the educational
system. Thus Washington called for the "promotion of science and
literature" ancl the establishment of a national university. Jefferson,
Madison and John Quincy Adams repeated this recommendation. After
the Civil War, Grant, pointing out that an ignorant electorate would
inevitably be governed "by the demagogue or by priestcraft," declared,
"The education of the masses becomes of the first necessity for the
preservation of our institutions." I n this spirit Hayes asked Congress
for programs which would supplement " w i t h national aid the local
systems of education . . . in all the States"—a proposal renewed by
Arthur and Benjamin Harrison. I t was only i n the 20th century i n one
of those curious moments of constitutional regression, that aid for education seemed for a season an improper policy for the general government.
This spacious view of the role of government received its classic
statement from John Quincy Adams i n his First Message. "The great
object of the institution of civil government," Adams wrote
is the improvement
of the condition of those who are parties
to the social compact, and no government,
in whatever form
constituted,
can accomplish the laiuful ends of its institution but in proportion as it improves the condition of those
over whom it is established. . . . For the fulfilhnent of those
duties governments
are invested with power, and to the
attain:- ent of the end—the progressive improvement
of the
condition of the governed—the exercise of delegated
powers
is a duty as sacred and indispensable
as the usurpation of
powers not granted is criminal and odious.
The conception of affirmative national action commanded increasing
support, even among those who had begun as opponents of a strong
central government. Though Jefferson had said in his First Message,
"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, ancl navigation, the four pillars
of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise," he had quickly added, "Protection from casual embarrassments, however, may sometimes be seasonably interposed." By
his Sixth Message he was urging that the budgetary surplus be applied
"to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals and
such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper
5
-
�[ N T RO D UC'
I O N
XX111
to atkl to the constitutional enumeration of Federal powers." The Virginia Presidents did not appear to doubt the wisdom of the policy of
national development; they doubted only that the Constitution gave
the central government the power to carry the policy out, and wished
to clear up the doubt by constitutional amendment.
In the meantime, the country grew. I t built cities, it began the
process of industrialization, it spilled over into the vacant west. I n 1801
Jefferson predicted that the population would double in another
twenty-two years (he was off by a single year). " W i t h i n the last half
century," Fillmore could write in 1852, "the number of States i n this
Union has nearly doubled, the population has almost quadrupled, and
our boundaries have been extended from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
Our territory is checkered over with railroads and furrowed with
canals." A year later Pierce forecast a population of 100,000,000 i n another half century (he was off by fifteen years). Lincoln was even more
extravagant in his Message of ISfil: "There are already among us those
who if the Union be preserved will live to see it contain 250,000,000."
The next year he announced 1930 as the date at which we would arrive
at this state of beatitude (he was off by 127,000,000).
But the country grew in the main without the guiding national
hand envisaged by John Quincy Adams: the constitutional doubts were
still unresolved. So Jackson, coming to office as a champion of strict
economy and strict construction, argued in his First Message that "the
great mass of legislation relating to our internal affairs was intended to
be left where the Federal Convention found it—in the State governments." Van Buren, confronted by a grave national depression, could
only say bleakly in a message to a special session of Congress, "Those
who look, to the action of this Government for specific aid to the citizen
to relieve embarrassments arising from losses by revulsions i n commerce and credit lose sight of the ends for which it was created and the
powers with which it was clothed. . . . A l l communities are apt to
look to government for too much." Buchanan repeated the point in the
midst of the Panic of 1857 twenty years later: "The Federal Government can nol do much to provide against a recurrence of existing evils."
The argument about the role of government swayed back and
forth through the century with the tariff and the currency as focal
points. But in the meantime the economy itself began to acquire a new
structure. Jackson, for all his presumed ideological opposition to centralized power, had made the national government stronger than ever
before by asserting the national authority both against the states and
against the United States Bank, the symbol of a corporate system tending, as he said in 1832, "to concentrate wealth into a few hands." By
1835 lie was calling for "an effectual stand against this spirit of monopoly." Van Buren in 1837 condemned "the already overgrown influence
�XXIV
INTRODUCTION
of corporate authorities," and in 1840 the rise of "a concentrated money
power." Polk, another f a i t h f u l Jacksonian, rejected the American System in 1848 as a program "to advance the interests of large capitalists
and monopolists at the expense of the great mass of the people . . .
[tending] to build up an aristocracy of wealth, to control the masses of
society, and monopolize the political power of the country. . . . Its
effect was 'to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.' . . . I t was an
organized money power, which resisted the popular w i l l and sought to
shape and control the public policy."
Andrew Johnson, still another old Jacksonian, resuscitated the
theme after the Civil War: "Monopolies, perpetuities and class legislation are contrary to the genius of free government." By 1888 Cleveland
was talking in agitated language about "the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while tlie citizen is struggling far in the rear
or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which
should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants
of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters." He turned a
familiar epithet to unfamiliar use:
Communism
is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and
organized government;
but the communism
of combined
luealth and capital, the outgrowtli of overweening
cupidity
and selfishness, which insidiously
undermines
the justice
and integrity of free institutions,
is not less darigerous than
the communism
of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.
Yet, like the old Jeffersonians and Jacksonians, Cleveland was
caught in the dilemma between his social fears and his constitutional
scruples. Ideology blocked him from acting against the situation he
perceived with such vividness. " I t is quite doubtful," he said in his
final Message in 1896, "whether the evils of trusts and monopolies can
be adequately treated through Federal action." He stuck to the same
view of the limited federal role through the hard times of the Eighties
and Nineties, brusquely dismissing the notion "that the General Government is the fountain of individual and private aid; that it may be
expected to relieve with paternal care the distress of citizens and communities, and that from the fullness of its Treasury it should, upon the
slightest possible pretext of promoting the general good, apply public
funds to the benefit of localities and individuals." So too McKinley in
his T h i r d Message reinforced Adam Smith by Charles Darwin: "The
doctrine of evolution and the rule of the survival of the fittest are as
inexorable in their operation as they are positive in the results they
bring about."
5
�INTRODUCTION
XXV
But, as Cleveland himself had said in another connection in his
1887 Message, " I t is a condition which confronts us, not a theory." I n
the end, it was Theodore Roosevelt who closed the gap between 18th
century dogma ancl 20th century reality by combining the social ends of
Jefferson with the constitutional means of John Quincy Adams. T h e
old laws and customs, T . R. claimed in his First Message, were no
longer sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of
wealth. "The tremendous and highly complex industrial development
. . . brings us face to face . . . with very serious social problems"
. . . the great corporations, the relationship between capital and labor,
the conditions of life of the working class, the exploitation of women
ancl children, the overcrowding of cities, the waste and depletion of
natural resources ("the fundamental problem which underlies almost
every other problem of our National life"). There seemed only one way
to meet such problems, and Roosevelt expounded it again and again
in his Messages:
In order to insure a healthy social and industrial life, every
big corporation should be held responsible by, and accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct.
. . . Only the National Government
can in
thoroughgoing
fashion exercise the needed control. . . .
This does not represent centralizatioyi. It represents merely
the acknowledgment
of the patent fact that
ccmtralization
has already come in busiyiess. If this irresponsible
outside
business power is to be controlled in the interest of the general public it can only be controlled in one way—by giving
adequate power of control to the one sovereignty capable of
exercising such power—the National
Government.
What Theodore Roosevelt called "tlie enlargement of scope of the
functions of the National Government required by our development as
a nation" became the dominating tendency of the domestic policies of
the 20th century. " M y point," said Wilson in his Second Message, "is
that the people of the United States do not wish to curtail the activities
of this Government; they wish, rather, to enlarge them; and with every
enlargement, with tlie mere growth, indeed, of tlie country itself, there
must come, of course, the inevitable increase of expense. . . . I t is not
expenditure but extravagance that we should fear being criticized for."
Going even fai ther, Wilson in 1919 called for "a genuine democratization of industry, based upon the f u l l recognition of the right of those
who work, in whatever rank, to participate in some organic way in
every decision which directly affects their welfare."
Conservative Presidents tried in the next decade to revive the
�XXVI
INTRODUCTION
past. " I n my opinion," said Coolidge in 1924, "the Government can do
more to remedy the economic ills of the people by a system of rigid
economy in public expenditure than can be accomplished through any
other action." Confronted by the worst depression in the nation's history, Hoover in 1930 issued a declaration of governmental impotence:
"Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action
of the cells of the economic body—the producers and consumers themselves." But Franklin Roosevelt, carrying forward the New Nationalism
of Theodore Roosevelt and the New Freedom of Wilson, held out in
his First Message the prospect of building "on the ruins of the past a
new structure designed better to meet the present problems of modern
civilization." I n his next to last Message in 1944, reflecting on the inalienable political rights of the American people, "our rights to life
and liberty," he said:
As our Nation has grown in size and stature . . . —as
our industrial economy expanded—these political rights have
proved inadequate
to assure us equality in the pursuit of
happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true
individual freedom cannot exist without economic
security
and independence.
'Necessitous men are not free men.'
He then set forth an "economic bill of rights," thereby preparing a
great part of the agenda for Truman's Fair Deal, Kennedy's New
Frontier and Johnson's Great Society.
T o the economic bill of rights Kennedy added a new concern with
"the quality of American life"—"This country cannot afford to be
materially rich and spiritually desperately poor"—and restated the
national interest declared by Washington and Jefferson in the promotions of the arts and sciences. "The Great Society," said Johnson in his
Second Message, "asks not only how much, but how good; not only how
to create wealth, but how to use it; not only how fast we are going but
where we are headed. I t proposes as the first test lor a nation: the
quality of its people." And so tlie National Government continued in
a changing world to discharge its responsibility to what John Quincy
Adams had describetl as its "great object"—"the progressive improvement of the condition of the governed."
The place of ethnic minorities. The Constitution was written, in
the main, by a group of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. But it was
�INTRODUCTION
XXV11
written for all American citizens. The national consciousness has ever
since been haunted by ethnic minorities—by Uncas and Chingachgook,
by Queequeg and Nigger Jim—anti the gap between the constitutional
promise to all men and the practical exclusion of certain minorities
has been an abiding problem for American Presidents.
Through the early years of American history the Indians were the
focus of concern. " A system corresponding with the mild principles of
religion and philanthropy toward an unenlightened race of men whose
happiness depends on the conduct of the United States," as Washington put it, "woidd be as honorable to the national character as conformable to the dictates of sound policy." But some "deluded tribes,"
he remarked, were engaged in warfare against the white man; and i t
was "necessary to convince the refractory of the power of the United
States to punish their depredations." Yet Washington also noted the
need for "tbe protection of the Indians from the violences of the lawless
part of our frontier inhabitants." Jefferson urged that by pursuing a
uniform course of justice toward them and aiding them in all the improvements which may better their condition,
wc may render ourselves so necessary to their comfort
and prosperity tliat the protection of our citizens from their
disorderly members will become their interest and their
voluntary care. Instead, therefore, of the augmentation
of
military force proportioned
to our extension of frontier, I
propose a moderate enlargement of the capital employed in
lhat commerce as a more effectual, economical, and humane
instrument
for preserving peace and good
neighborhood
with them.
This early experiment in a "good neighbor" policy was not, alas, that
easy. By 1812, various tribes, stimulated by the British, were on the warpath again—"that wretched portion of the human race," said Madison
angrily, ". . . armed with tlie horrors of those instruments of carnage
and torture which arc known to spare neither age nor sex." Monroe
offered a stark statement of the white man's philosophy: " T o civilize
them, and even to prevent their extinction, it seems to be indispensable
that their independence as communities should cease, and that the control of the United States over them should be complete and undisputed. . . . Left io themselves, their extirpation is inevitable." Later
lie proposed that they be induced to migrate to the west, though to
"remove them" from their present lands "by force, even with a view
to their own security and happiness, would be revolting to humanity
and utterly unjustifiable."
The white man was not wholly devoid of shame in his treatment of
�XXV111
INTRODUCTION
the Indians. "Professing a desire to civilize and settle them," as Jackson
said, "we have at the same time lost no opportunity to purchase their
lands and thrust them farther into the wilderness. By this means they
have not only been kept in a wandering state, but been led to look,
upon us as unjust and indifferent to their fate. Thus, though lavish in
its expenditures upon the subject, Government has constantly defeated
its own policy." They were a "much-injured race." "One by one have
many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. . . . The fate of the
Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast overtaking the
Choctaw, the Cherokee and the Creek." Yet Jackson, a son of the frontier, was philosophical about this prospect: "True philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one
generation to make room for another." Their only hope for survival, as
he saw it, was to set apart territory west of the Mississippi, "to be
guaranteed to the Indian tribes" under "governments of their own
choice," and "to send them to a land where their existence may be
prolonged and perhaps made perpetual."
And so, as the white man moved inexorably to the west, he drove
the Indians before him. "From the foundation of the Government to
the present," said Grant forty years after Jackson, "the management of
the original inhabitants of this continent—the Indians—has been a subject of embarrassment and expense, and has been attended with continuous robberies, murders and wars." The white man was partly at
fault; "the past, however, cannot be undone, and the question must be
met as we now find it." In 1877 Hayes strengthened the indictment of
the whites:
Many, if not most, of our Indian wars have had their origin
in broken promises and acts of injustice upon our part, and
the advance of the Indians in civilization has been slow because the treatment they received did not permit it to be
faster and more general. We cannot expect them to improve
a7id to follow our guidance unless wc keep faith with them
in respecting the rights they possess. . . . We owe it to them
as a moral duty to help them in attaining at least that degree of civilization xvhich they may be able to reach.
To this day the debt remains unredeemed.
The Constitution, while avoiding all mention of Negro slavery,
tacitly acquiesced in its existence where sanctioned by state law. It did,
however, require the abolition of the slave trade by 1808, withdrawing,
as Jefferson said in his Sixth Message, American citizens "from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been
so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which
�INTRODUCTION
XXIX
he morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have
ang been eager to proscribe." W i t h this exception, the early Presilents omitted discussion of slavery, and the rising sectional tension
ound only fitful reflection in the Annual Messages—as, for example, i n
835 when Jackson urged Congress to pass a law prohibiting the circuation in the south through the mail of "inflammatory appeals adIressed to the passions of the slaves . . . calculated to stimulate them
o insurrection and to produce all the horrors of a servile war."
But the question could not be kept down. I n 1847 Polk, i n an effort
o hold together the compromises on which the republic rested, warned
.hat the intensification of sectional politics was threatening the U n i o n :
'How unimportant," he hopefully said, "are all our differences of opinion upon minor questions of public policy compared with its preservation." Yet what he called "the only dangerous question which lies i n
our path" continued to defy resolution. I n 1855 Pierce expressed indignation that a "considerable portion of the people of this enlightened
country could have so surrendered themselves to the supposed interests
of the relatively few Africans in the United States as totally to abandon
and disregard the interests of the 25,000,000 Americans." The next year
he inveighed against the abolitionists for seeking a "revolutionary"
goal, which could be accomplished only "through burning cities, and
ravaged fields, and slaughtered populations, and all there is most terrible and foreign complicated with civil and servile war," driving the
nation "into mutual devastation and fratricidal carnage, transforming
the now peaceful and felicitous brotherhood into a vast permanent
camp of armed men like the rival monarchies of Europe and Asia."
But the moral sense of the nation could no longer tolerate a system
by which one man owned another as his personal property. " W i t h o u t
slavery," said Lincoln in his Second Message, "the rebellion could never
have existed; without slavery it could not continue." Then, when the
Civil War at last ended slavery as a legal system, the problem remained
of the national responsibility to the freedmen. Johnson, urging in his
First Message (written by George Bancroft) a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery forever, said, "This is the measure which w i l l
efface the sad memory of the past. . . . [ I t ] reunites us beyond all
powers of disruption." As for tlie ex-slaves, "the career of free industry
must be fairly opened to them, and then their future prosperity and
condition must, after all, rest mainly on themselves. I f they fail, and so
perish away, let us be careful that the failure shall not be attributable
to any denial of justice." Still, though a Unionist, Johnson was a
Southerner, and two years later he was denouncing "the subjugation of
the [southern] states to negro domination" and "the effort now making
to Africani/.e the half of our country," claiming that "negroes have
shown less capacity for government than any other race of persons . . .
�xxx
INTRODUCTION
Wherever they have been left to their own devices they have shown a
constant tendency to relapse into barbarism."
Johnson was unquestionably speaking the mood of the white South.
By 1874 Grant noted "decided indications" of a "determination, by
acts of violence and intimidation, to deprive citizens of the freedom of
the ballot." Without federal intervention, he said, "the whole scheme
of colored enfranchisement is worse than a mockery and little better
than a crime." He appealed to the South: "Treat the negro as a citizen
and a voter, as he is and must remain, and soon parties w i l l be divided,
not on the color line, but on principle." T w o years later, Hayes, announcing the end of military occupation, urged southern whites to
respect "the civil and political rights of the colored people." But only a
year after he was obliged to say that, in certain southern states, "the
records of the elections seem to compel the conclusion that the rights
of the colored voters have been overridden and their participation in
the elections not permitted to be either general or free." I t was the
executive duty, Hayes went on, "to inquire into and punish violations"
of the law: " I t is the right of every citizen possessing the qualifications
prescribed by law to cast one unintimidated ballot and to have his
ballot honestly counted." I n another year he called for "a more general
and complete establishment, at whatever cost, of universal security and
freedom in the exercise of the elective franchise" so that " a l l over our
wide territory the name and character of citizen of the United States
shall mean one and the same thing." In his Fourth Message Hayes once
again condemned the southern states for their success " i n defeating the
exercise of the right preservative of all rights—the right of suffrage—
which the Constitution expressly confers upon our enfranchised
citizens."
But the question was receding from the national conscience and
consciousness. Arthur hardly mentioned it; Cleveland ignored i t ; and it
was not t i l l a decade after Hayes when Benjamin Harrison reopened
the issue wilh striking moral fervor.
The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us.
They were brought here hi chains and held in the communities wliere they are now chiefly found by a cruel slave code.
Happily for both races, they are now free. They have from a
standpoint of ignorance and. poverty—which
was our shame,
not theirs—made remarkable advances in education and in
the acquisition of property. . . .
But notwithstanding
all this, in many parts of our
country where the colored population
is large the people of
that race are by various devices deprived of any effective
exercise of their political tights and of many of their civil
�INTRODUCTION
XXXI
rights. The wrong docs not expend itself upon those whose
votes are suppressed. Every constituency
in the Union is
wronged.
Harrison took note of the southern arguments. " I f it is said that these
communities must work out this problem for themselves, we have a
right to ask whether they are at work upon it. Do they suggest any
solution? When and under what conditions is the black man to have a
free ballot? When is he i n fact to have those ftdl civil rights which have
so long been his in law? . . . This generation should courageously
face these grave questions, and not leave them as a heritage of woe to
the next."
For himself, Harrison recommended enlarged federal intervention.
"The colored man should be protected in all of his relations to the
Federal Government; whether as litigant, juror, or witness in our
courts, as an elector for members of Congress, or as a peaceful traveler
upon our interstate railways." I n subsequent Messages he renewed his
appeal for federal supervision of congressional elections, rejecting the
idea that the conciliation of the south required "connivance at election
practices that not only disturb local results, but rob the electors of
other States anti sections of tficir most priceless political rights." But
Harrison's campaign had no effect on a complacent people. The nation
became increasingly faithless to what he called the "first condition" of
the government's trust—"the defense of the free and equal influence of
the people in tiie choice of public officers and in the control of public
affairs." Tlie result was the passing on of the "heritage of woe" to
future generations.
After Harrison the question of Negro rights—excepting only the
right not to be lynched—disappeared from Annual Messages for many
years; and even Theodore Roosevelt, in a passiorTate condemnation of
lynching, was moved to add, "Every colored man should realize that the
worst enemy of his race is the negro criminal, and above all the negro
criminal who commits the dreadful crime of rape." Forty years passed
before T r u m a n revived the issue of civil rights in 1948: "Our first goal
is to secure fully the essential human lights of our citizens. . . .
Whether discrimination is based on race, or creed, or color, it is utterly
contrary to American ideals of democracy." But what T r u m a n in his
last Message called "a great awakening of tlie American conscience on
the issue of civil rights" was still shamefully slow to take effect. Eisenhower, while urging further progress, could as late as 1956 describe
statements that "Negro citizens are being deprived of their right to
vote" as "allegations." W i t h Kennedy and his successor, the Presidency
beg an at last to catch up with the problem. "As far as the writ of Federal law will run," said Lyndon Johnson in his First Message, "we
�XXX11
INTRODUCTION
must abolish not some but all racial discrimination. For this is not
merely an economic issue—or a social, political, or international issue.
It is a moral issue."
If Indians and Negroes were people of a different color, the course
of immigration in the 19th century, bringing in members of white
ethnic minorities created another range of problems. "Shall oppressed
humanity find no asylum on this globe?" Jefferson had asked in his
First Message in recommending a shortening of the time required
for naturalization. As the rate of entry increased. Polk could say
proudly in his Third Message in 1847:
Numerous emigrants, of every lineage and language, attracted by the civil and religious freedom we enjoy and by
our happy condition, annually crowd to our shores, and
transfer their heart, not less than their allegiance, to the
country whose dominion belong alone to the people.
" I regard our immigrants" said Lincoln, urging new measures for the
"encouragement" of immigration in his last Message, "as one of the
principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to
repair the ravages of internal war and its wastes of national strength
and health."
But the national mood was beginning to change. The first casualties were the Chinese streaming into the Pacific states. In 1874 Grant
asked for legislation against the import of Chinese contract labor. In
his Third Message Benjamin Harrison, noting the rush of Russian
Jews into the United States because of anti-Semitism in their homeland,
observed, "The sudden transfer of such a multitude under conditions
that tend to strip them of their small accumulations and to depress
their energies and courage is neither good for them nor for us." A year
later he suggested that "admission to our country and to the high
privilege of its citizenship should be more restricted and more careful"; we have a duty "not only to keep out the vicious, the ignorant,
the civil disturber, the pauper, and the contract laborer, but to check
the too great flow of immigration now coming by further limitations."
Theodore Roosevelt proposed educational and economic tests as well
as the absolute exclusion of anarchists: "We cannot have too much
immigration of the right kind, anil we should have none at all of the
wrong kind." (He added, however, "Let us remember that the question
of being a good American has nothing whatever to do with a man's
birthplace any more than it has to do with his creed," and he wanted
to change the Chinese exclusion laws to "admit all Chinese, except
Chinese of the coolie class.")
Wilson stood against the campaign for restriction. But by the
�INTRODUCTION
XXX111
Twenties tlie struggle appeared lost. Harding called for alien registration, and Coolidge in his First Message crisply summed up the postwar attitude: "New arrivals should be limited to our capacity to absorb
them into the ranks of good citizenship. America must be kept American." It took the Second World War to bring back the views of Jefferson and Lincoln. "Our democratic ideals," said T r u m a n in his F i f t h
Message, "as well as our own best interests, require that we do our fair
share in providing homes for the unfortunate victims of war and
tyranny." Eisenhower and Kennedy moved steadily to reaffirm the
earlier traditions of the republic—the policy defined by Lyndon Johnson in his Second Message as "an immigration law based on the work
a man can do and not where he was born or how he spells his name."
The evolution of presidential power. The Annual Message, as an
appointed medium of communication from President to Congress, became both an instrument and an index of presidential leadership.
When Jefferson ended the practice of personal delivery of the Message,
he was making a symbolic demonstration of his party's distrust of a
strong executive. "Nothing shall be wanting on my part," he assured
Congress in his own First Message, "to inform as far as in my power the
legislative judgment, nor to carry lhat judgment into f a i t h f u l execution." This deferential language actually concealed an astute executive
purpose, but Jefferson's Virginia successors soon subsided into a more
passive conception of the presidential responsibility.
Then with Jackson the Presidency suddenly acquired new vigor;
and the Jacksonian theory of the Presidency as the tribune of the people received its ablest contemporary vindication by Polk in his last
Message. Defending the most conspicuous form of Executive aggression
against the congressional will—the veto power—Polk wrote:
// at any time Congress shall, after apparently full deliberation, resolve on measures which he deerns subversive of the
Constitution
or of the vital interests of the country, it is his
solemn duty to stand in the breach and resist them. . . .
Any attempt to coerce the President to yield his sanction to
measures which he cannot approve would be a violation of
the spirit of the Constitution,
palpable and flagrant, and if
successful would break down the independence
of the executive department and make the President, elected by the people and clothed by the Constitution
with power to defend
their rights, the mere instrument of a majority of Congress.
�XXXIV
INTRODUCTION
Polk had no patience for the argument that Congress was more representative of the people than the President. "The President," he replied
briskly, "represents in the executive tlepartment the whole people of
the United States, as each member of the legislative department represents portions of them." Indeed, "the mere passage of a b i l l by Congress is no conclusive evidence that those who passed it represent the
majority of the people of the United States or truly reflect their w i l l . "
Such statements could not, of course, settle the issue; and the cold
war between the President and the Congress has remained a central
(and wholesome) feature of American political history. I t only rarely,
however, reached the point it did in 1855 when Pierce waited a month
for notification from Congress that it was ready to hear from h i m and,
when no signal was forthcoming, sent his Message over anyway. The
Presidency reached its nadir a few years later with Buchanan. " W i t h out the authority of Congress," Buchanan said in his T h i r d Message,
"the President cannot fire a hostile gun in any case except to repel the
attacks of an enemy." "After a l l , " he added the next year, with the
country on the verge of civil war, "he is no more than the chief executive officer of the Government. His province is not to make but to
execute the laws." And, while lie agreed that the southern states had no
constitutional right to secede from tlie Union ("secession is neither
more nor less than revolution"), he saw nothing that the President
could do about i t :
Apart from the execution of the laws, so far as this may be
practicable, the Executive has no authority to decide what
shall be the relations between the Federal Government
and
South Caroliyia. . . . It is therefore my duty to submit to
Congress the whole question in all its bearings.
Buchanan's successor, recoiling from this theory of executive and
national impotence, returned to the Jacksonian theory of the Presidency. Lincoln, indeed, found in the idea of "the war power," as invoked in his T h i r d Message, an apparently inexhaustible excuse for
enlarging the presidential authority. After the war Congress struck
back by passing the tenure-ol-oflice act, requiring senatorial consent to
the removal of all appointees who had senatorial confirmation—an act
ot legislative aggression against which Andrew [olinson vainly protested in his T h i r d Message. Accepting the new mood, Grant told the
Congress in the midst of the Depression of 1873, " I t is the duty of
Congress to devise the method of correcting the evils which are
acknowledged to exist, and not mine."
The Buchanan-Grant conception of the Presidency could not
easily survive the challenges placed on national leadership by the conn-
�INTRODUCTION
XXXV
try's growth into an industrial society and a world power. I n the 20th
century, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt resumed the path of Jackson and Lincoln. T r u m a n , admonishing his
successor in his last Message, summed up this evolution:
The President-elect is about to lake up the greatest
burdens,
the most compelling responsibilities,
given lo any man. . . .
What are these tasks? The President is Chief of State,
elected representative of all the people. He is Commander in
Chief of our Armed Forces. He is charged with the conduct
of our foreign relations. He is Chief Executive
of the
Nation's largest civilian organization.
He must select and
nominate all top officials of the executive branch and all
Federal judges. And, on the legislative side, he has the obligation and the opportunity
to recornmend and to approve
or veto legislation. Besides all this, it is lo him that a great
political party turns naturally for leadership, and that, too,
he must provide as President.
This bundle of burdens is unique; there is nothing like
it on the face of the earth.
Eisenhower, more attracted by the Buchanan-Grant thesis, responded
in his own last Message: "Earnest and persistent attempts have been
made to strengthen the position of State and local governments and
thereby to stop the dangerous d r i f t toward centralization of governmental power in Washington." His successors, however, restored the
presidential tradition of Jackson and Lincoln.
Though the Message remained formally an epistle from the President to Congress, it was a communication which the rest of the nation
was bound to overhear, and this, of course, was one of ils points. Washington in his Second Message thus stressed the proposition that the
Chief Executive must give "the fullest evidence of a disposition as far
as may be practicable to consult the wishes of every part of the community and to lay tire foundations of the public administration i n the
affections of the people." T o do this, as Monroe argued thirty years
later,
the people being with us exclusively the sovereign, it is indispensable that full information
be laid before them on all
important
subjects, to enable them to exercise that high
power with complete effect. If kept, in the dark, they must
be incompetent
to it. We are all liable to error, and those
wlio are engaged in the management
of public affairs are
more subject to excitement and to be led astray by their par-
�XXXVI
INTRODUCTION
ticular interests and passio?is than the great body of our constituents, who, living at home in the pursuit of their ordinary
avocations, are calm but deeply interested spectators of
events and of the conduct of those who are parties to them.
To the people every department of the Government and
every individual in each are responsible, and the more full
their information the better they can judge of the wisdom
of the policy pursued and of the conduct of each in regard
to it.
This act of presidential communication was not to be exercised lightly.
"In times like the present," said Lincoln in his Second Message, "men
should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible
through time and in eternity."
Nor, in a democracy, could it be a one-way process. The people
through their representatives, their newspapers and their right of
petition had to be free to send back their own state-of-the-union messages to the President. Thus Washington, noting that provisions in the
postal law might hold up the transmission of newspapers, observed,
"A full conviction of the importance of facilitating the circulation of
political intelligence and information will, I doubt not, lead to the
application of a remedy." In spite of this early presidential concern, it
must be conceded, the Bill of Rights as such came in for surprisingly
perfunctory attention in Annual Messages until recent times. Some
Presidents even seemed to feel that liberty might too easily become
license—not only Jackson trying to suppress abolitionist propaganda
in the South, but even the great libertarian Jefferson himself. The law,
Jefferson said in his Sixth Message, provided for the punishment of
crimes against the public peace or authority once they were committed.
But xuould it not be salutary to give also the means of preventing their com?nission? Where an enterprise is meditated
by private individuals against a foreign nation in amity with
the United States, powers of prevention to a certain extent
arc given by the laws. Would they not be as reasonable and
useful where the enterprise preparing is against the United
States?
He had in mind, of course, the Burr conspiracy; but he seemed to be
calling for the prosecution of thoughts, in advance of overt acts. The
next year he returned to the theme: "The framers of our Constitution
certainly supposed they had guarded as well their Government against
destruction by treason as their citizens against oppression under pre-
�INTRODUCTION
XXXV11
tense of it, and if these ends are not attained it is of importance to
inquire by what means more effectual they may be secured."
Still another progressive President, Wilson, could in 1919 blame
"the widespread condition of political restlessness in our body politic"
in part on "the transfusion of radical theories from seething European
centers" and "the machinations of passionate and malevolent agitators." Yet, except for wartime, Presidents have been on the whole reluctant to abridge the freedoms of expression and conscience pledged
in the First Amendment. And the crusade waged by modern totalitarianism against individual freedom in the 20th century compelled an
increasing recognition of the place of the Bill of Rights in the American system. So Franklin Roosevelt made "freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world" the first of his Four Freedoms. "We
must take our stand on the Bill of Rights," said Truman in his last
Message. "The inquisition, the star chamber, have no place in a free
society." Eisenhower saw the problem differently. "Our national security demands that the investigation of new employees and the evaluation of derogatory information respecting present employees be expedited," he said in his Second Message. ". . . We are dealing here
with actions akin to treason." Like Jefferson, he sought "additional
legal weapons with which to combat subversion." Kennedy, on the
other hand, in his First Message returned to the spirit of the Bill of
Rights: "Let it be clear that this Administration recognizes the value
of dissent and daring—that we greet healthy controversy as the hallmark
of healthy change."
The national experiment. "The preservation of the sacred fire of
liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government," Washington said in his Inaugural Address, "are justly considered, perhaps,
as deeply, as finally staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of
the American people."
His successors watched the progress of this experiment with anxiety
and hope. In his last Message Madison permitted himself to "indulge
the proud reflection that the American people have reached in safety
and success their fortieth year as an independent nation." This, the
Presidents knew, had more than local significance. "Our institutions,"
said Monroe in his own last Message, "form an important epoch in the
history of the civilized world. On their preservation and in their utmost purity everything will depend." "The present year," added Van
Buren in 1838, "closes the first half century of our Federal institutions.
• . . It was reserved for the American Union to test the advantages of
a government entirely dependent on the continual exercise of the popu-
�XXXV111
INTRODUCTION
lar w i l l , and our experience has shown that it is as beneficent in practice as it is just in theory." Polk made the point even more strongly i n
his T h i r d Message:
After an existence of near three-fourths of a century as a free
and independent
Republic, the problem no longer remains
to be solved whether man is capable of self-government.
The
success of our admirable system is a conclusive refutation of
the theories of those in other countries who maintain that a
'favored few' are born to rule and that the mass of mankind
must be governed by force.
The successful prosecution of the Mexican War, Polk added in his last
Message, "evinces beyond all doubt that a popular representative government is equal to any emergency which is likely to arise in the affairs
of a nation." Sixty years after the Constitution, Taylor in his First Message pronounced the United States of America "the most stable and
permanent Government on earth."
Stability hardly seemed the most prominent feature of the American polity in the next years. But the nation survived the test of civil
war; and Andrew Johnson could say of the American form of government after the three-quarter of a century mark, "Experience has proved
its sufficiency in peace and in war; it has vindicated its authority
through dangers and afflictions, and sudden and terrible emergencies.
. . . T h e experience of centuries lias been crowded into a few generations, and has created an intense, indestructible nationality. . . . The
latent conviction that our form of government is the best ever known
to the world has enabled us to emerge from civil war within four years
with a complete vindication of the constitutional authority of the General Government and with our local liberties and State institutions
unimpaired."
"Where in past history," Johnson concluded, "does a parallel exist
to the public happiness which is within the reach of the people of the
United States?" Still, the quest for national contentment remained
elusive. A century after the Constitution, Cleveland expressed gloomy
forebodings, reminiscent of nothing so much as Walt W h i t m a n in
Democratic Vistas. The early years of the republic, Cleveland said, had
been marked by the sobriety of "the plain people who, side by side, in
friendly competition wrought for the ennoblement and dignity of man,
for the solution of the problem of free government, and for the achievement of the grand destiny awaiting the land which God had given
them." Now a century had passed.
Our cities are the abiding places of wealth and luxury; our
manufactories yield fortunes never dreamed of by the fathers
�INTRODUCTION
XXX1X
of the Republic; our business men are madly striving in the
race for riches, and immense aggregations of capital
outrun
the imagination
in the magnitude of theif
undertakings.
We view with pride and satisfaction this bright
picture
of our country's growth and prosperity, ivhile only a closer
scrutiny develops a somber shading. Upon more careful inspection we find the wealth and luxury of our cities mingled
with poverty and wretchedness and unremunerative
toil. A
crowded and constantly increasing urban population
suggests the impoverishment
of rural sections and
discontent
loith agricultural
pursuits. The farmer's son, not satisfied
with his father's simple and laborious life, joins the eager
chase for easily acquired wealth. . . . The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, the classes
are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor. . . . The
existing situation is injurious to the health of our entire
body politic. . . . It appears in the sordid disregard of all
but personal interests, in the refusal to abate for the benefit
of others one iota of selfish advantage, and in
combinations
to perpetuate
such advantages through efforts to control
legislation and improperly
influence the suffrages of the
people. . . . The beneficent purposes of our
Government,
dependent upon the patriotism and contentment
of our people, are endangered.
Not everyone shared Cleveland's pessimism. "Popular government," said McKinley in his last Message, "has demonstrated i n its one
hundred and twenty-four years of trial here its stability and security,
and its efficiency as the best instrument of national development and
the best safeguard to human rights. . . . Education, religion, and
morality have kept pace with our advancement i n other directions.
. . . A nation so preserved ancl blessed gives reverent thanks to God."
But Theodore Roosevelt, less complacent, urged his countrymen to
strive for moral betterment.
We have plenty of sins of our own to war against, and under
ordinary circumstances
we can do more for the general
uplifting of liumanily by striving with heart and soul to put
a stop to civic corruption, to brutal lawlessness and. violent
race prejudices here at home than by passing
resolutions
about wrongdoing
elsewhere.
The great Presidents of the 20th century agreed much more w i t h
Theodore Roosevelt than with McKinley. As Franklin Roosevelt put
�xl
INTRODUCTION
it in his Fourth Message, the Depression of 1929 meant something
more than the breakdown of the visible economic mechanism. It was
a supreme test of the democratic system. I t meant that
long neglect of the needs of the underprivileged had brought
too many of our people to the verge of doubt as to the successful adaptation of our historic traditions to the complex
modern world. In that lay a challenge to our democratic
form of government itself. Ours was the task to prove that
democracy could be made to function in the world of today
as effectively as in the simpler world of a hundred years ago.
Nor was this simply a domestic challenge. "Dictatorships—and the
philosophy of force which justifies and accompanies dictatorships—,"
Roosevelt said three years later, "have originated in almost every case
in the necessity for drastic action to improve internal conditions where
democratic action for one reason or another has failed to respond to
modern needs and modern demands." The republic now faced "a set
of world-wide forces of disintegration." Survival required purpose. "We
have learned by bitter experience," said Truman, combating McKinley's Darwinism in his Fifth Message, "that progress is not automatic
—that wrong policies lead to depression and disaster." Truman's last
Message stated the issue with quiet eloquence:
Let all of us pause now, think back, consider carefully the
meaning of our national experience. Let us draw comfort
from it and faith and confidence in our future as Americans.
The Nation's business is never finished. The basic questions we have been dealing with, these eight years past, present themselves anew. That is the way of our society. Circumstances change and current questions take on different
forms, new complicatiofis, year by year. But underneath the
great issues remain the same—prosperity, welfare, human
rights, effective democracy, and, above all, peace.
So the long labor of liberty continued. Kennedy in his First Message asked "whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can
endure" and replied: "The outcome is by no means certain." And in
his Second Message Lyndon Johnson pointed out that the American
people were entering their third century in pursuit of union. In 1765
nine British colonies first joined together to affirm the first continental
union of democracy. In 1865, "following a terrible test of blood and
fire, the compact of union was finally sealed." In the second century
Americans labored to establish a unity of interest and purpose among
the diverse groups making up the national community.
I
1
�Xli
INTRODUCTION
Now, in 1965, we begin a new quest for union. We seek the
unity of man with the world he has built—with the knoiuledge that can save or destroy him—with the cities which can
stimulate or stifle him—with the wealth and machines which
can enrich or menace his spirit. We seek to establish a harmony between man and society which will allow each of us
to enlarge the meaning of his life and all of us to elevate the
quality of our civilization.
The nation's business, as Truman said, is never finished. And in
['the unending quest Americans will always be guided by the most propound and beautiful passage in all the Annual Messages—the conclu|sion of Lincoln's Second Message in 1862:
The dogma of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy
present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we
must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, so we must
think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves,
and then we shall save our country.
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. . . . The
fiery trial through which we pass ruill light us down in honor
or dishonor to the latest generation. In giving freedom to
the slave we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in
what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or
meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may
succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful,
generous, just—a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and. God must forever bless.
PRINCETON,
NEW
JERSEY
APRIL,
1966
�11/20/1998
12:21
8042438843
PAGE 01
MADISON PAPERS
The Tapers of James ZMadison
S P O N S O R E D BY T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F V I R G I N I A
PUBLISHED
BY T H E U N I V E R S I T Y
PRESS OF V I R G I N I A
TO:
Josh Gottheimer
FAX 202-456-2505
FROM:
RE:
John Stagg
Presidential Messages
DATE:
Novenvber 20, 1998
>
7
!
-£3 t
Here i s the material we discussed.
" ^4 ?
Total pages, including this cover:
7
ALDERMAN LIBRARY. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA 22903-2498
TELEPHONE: (804) 924-3987 FAX: (804) 243-8843 WEBSITE: htlp://wwu/.virginiQ.edu/pjm/
�11/20/1998
12:21
8042438843
MADISON PAPERS
THE CREATION OF THE PRESJPENCY
177*-I7S9
A STUDY IN CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY
BY
CHARLES C. THACH, JR.
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Board of University Studies of The Johns
Hopkins University in Conformity with the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
1923
BALTIMORE
igaa
PAGE 02
�CkE-ATrDN' OK THF. V M S i D E N C Y
D I E J'KES]I)ENCr "M T H E FEpnR.V, CONVENTION
and iience ^flsworth's, for Sherman certainlv -rofed no, had
been rail lor executive unity. He hid sought to create an
elei.-toritl co]"ege which woufd satisfy si:ia!l state aspirations,
and. when same of the smaU States reverted to the original
scheme, had, with Johnson, ntainlained Cohneclxut in its
support of rhe electoral coilege principle. Hcvevcr, lie was
the reprcieiUativc- of a small 5:a;e, anc. as inch, had iavcred.
seratona] ciioice of the judiciary Mter tlie equal vote deiern>in.-nan. On the wltrJc. therctorc-. lhe statement tliat there
way 'i fairly even halance seems ju.rtified, but v,-'.th this (juahficotwr.. Jn so far as fillls'.vc:"t!;'s "mr.!! .,C2:e interests overcame hii bilief in execjtive itren^lh, just that far would the
infjuence of a majority of the committee be favorable to
enhancement cf senatcria;, at the expense of presidential,
power. This was a significant f a d . '
Tfrf p^* H i u p w ^ j v j m w i f the -mpnripd V r^inia plaiL-of
course, formed the basis of the cemmittee's work. O f the
offier two documents before them, tne Paterson. resolutions
could be cf h'ttle value, but the same is HCT true of the
Pinckrey plan.
Thanks lo the researches of Professors Jameson and McLotighiin, (he student of today car. speak with a degree of
certainty concerning this document which for 50 long proved
a mystery. A n outline of the plen and an excerpt from its
provisions, fortunately for our purposes thai portion concerning the executive powers, have been disrnvered in the
papers of James Wilson and comiiistely identified. By comparing witV. these Finckney's pamphlet published jast after
the Convention's adjoLimneut,* the executive of Pinckney's
plan may i:>e reproduced with considerable fullness.
,
The Wilson outline, irtides fire and six, reads as follows:
;
;
:
r
The Senate ar.d H. D. [House of Delegates! shall by joint ballot
' Th«re is no evidence that the committee ballotrd on any point
but the balance ci opinion is none tbe less worthy cf no:e.
Otuervations on the Plan of Govexr.menl Submitted to the Federal Convention. Farrand, Records, vol. iii, p. 106 3. For the
most complete and aurhoiitative rescrration of the Pinckney plaa.
see Farranc, Records, vol lit. appendix D.
4
JOQ
annnaliy chu.se the Prejidt. U.-S. from among themsefves or ihe
PCCF .': at larpe.—In & f Pr;sicr. th? i-.-rccuLive A'j!h:-rtty ef the. L".
S. shall be ve.<le<L—Hii Pcver; ar.d Dalies—He sha'.i have a Right
to advise with the Heads ol the differvn: Dejiartmwts is his Council.
Council oi Revision, consisting of the Presidi. S. for for. Affairs,
S. 01 War, Heads of the Departments of Treasury and Admiralty
er any two 0: Ihem mgr wi the Frcsidc
1
3
Thf definition of powers contained in Wilson's excerpt can
also be^t f>e 3'iven in f u l l :
There >hal he 1 Proficient, in wliich the Es. Au:r j-rity oi t h e j i *
^. shall he vcftc-i. T: -t.aii nr ' -r "rr.v ro ir:"-irai ihi- LL>-i^iarciij^uj '
r;u^_Ci-iL-.lii:-.n__ai-^-•
•'^
re^o-ect Iv.i I'vp^njsxu}—to;
r«co-j!r;:e!:c rratter? ''.- iheir C'-i^idf-n '-nn—rnrrtiiyotuS with the
Kxecunivvi of the ic-.crit isttUj—iv attend so •l.c ELxecuiion 0: the
Laws of the L'. S.—to Transact Affair; with the Offict-rs of (.io\criinetiT. ci\ !l ar.J niUtary—ir expedite all f.jch Measure; as ma}' be rej.Dlved on by tlie Leei-la-.ure—inspect the Departments of foreign
affairs—War—Trcaiun —Admiralty—to reiide where the Leeisla-^
Jure shall sit—to conim-swor. all Officers, and keep tie Great Sea
of U. S.- He shali. by Vinuc of his Crice, he Comnander in chi''
cf the Land Forces oi Le S. ar.d Adrriril ai their Navy—He std
have power to convent the iegislature on extraordir.ary occasiot)*—
to prorogue their., provided iueh Prorogation >hall not excee
Dayi in the space of any —He may suspend officers, civil and military.
r n a v
l
-
111
In his "Observatior^," Pinckney jheds additional light
conrerninj itis inten;ions. To the duty " to attend to the
Execution of the Laws of the U . S." he adds the phrase " by
the several States/' evir.ently inter.rimg by the clause somethin? of the kind suggested by Paterson, rathe: than a genera! law enferccment and administrative power, which, as
has been seen above, was amply provided for by other clause^.
The President himself was to be an administrative ofncerA
being "charged with al". the bnsiress of the Home'Depart- )
ment." The presidential nower to inspect the departments
wonld "operate," the pamphlet declares, "as £ check upon
those officers-, keep them attentive to their duty, and may be
the means in time not only of p-eventing anc correcting
errors, but of detecting; and punishing pal-practices^-" Also
"Ibid., vol. ii, p. I3=> Annual was a mistake for sepCenniai. See
ibid., vol. i . 68; vol. ii:, V- uo. His executive was to be eligible
for reele<rtion, arcordirc to the "Observations."
Ibid., vol. ii. p. 15S.
15
"0
00
i
�no
CREATION OF T H E PRESIDBNCY
T H E PRESIDENCY tN THE FEDERAL OONVENTION
the President might " consider the principals of the Departments as his Council, and . . . acquire their advice and assistance, whenever the duties oi his Office shallrenderit
necessary. By this means our Government will possess what
it has always wanted, but never yet had, a Cabinet Council.
An institution essential in all Governments, whose situation
or connections oblige them to have an intercourse with other
powers." The recommending function is expanded into the
duty "to prepare and digest, in concert with the great departments, such business as will come before the Legislatnre
at their stated sessions." Tbe power of appointment was to
be possessed by the President, with the exception of Judicial
and diplomatic officers."
Without at this point entering into a discussion of tbe influence of this plan on the committee's report, it is due
Pinckney tolay that, as an abstract question, his concept of
^ what constituted executive power was remarkably complete,
and his treatment of it far more satisfactory than that of the
Virginia plan. The existence of the Wilson excerpt is not
accidental. It was made because of the fact that Pinckney
had afforded by far the most complete enumeradon of executive powers submitted at any time to the Convention's attention, and one characterized by careful and original thought
on the subject.
The origin of much of it U rery plainly the Hew YnHr
constitution, a further evidence of the interest which the
Jforlc executive provisions harf aroused in student of
fojoinmeiit. Those dauses whichconcemed the general
possession of executive power, t h ^ x t h e general vesting
clause, military control, convening iqd pVorognitig the legis- *
latu^c-ihe sessional message of information, the righfto
make recommendations, and what may be called the law enforcemeat clauses, were all taken almost verbatim from that
'f
aadlLa*Wfl T,
desgqitiop of aacuface-pogg, turned te Ptnrlm.y A H ^
(
t r a m e n t
m
i n
nT1
i r n ? r i f r
s
" I b i d , vol. iii, p. IIX.
n
II I
o Pin^iu^jt-hadJyrned to the powers exercised by Governor
Clinton. *
'"tVitb these materials at its disposal, the committee began
its work by assigning to Governor Randolph, as the mover
o: the original resolutions, the honor of making tbe first draft
of tbe Constitution proper. ' This draft was submitted to
the committee for discussion ar.d emendation. * The
amended draft was then entrusted to Wilson for further
expansion. The Wilson draft, after further amendment by
the committee, became the report of the committee. '
Thanks to tbe labors of modern investigators, and equally
to Professor Farrand's monumental work, it wifl be possible
to trace this expansion of the meager provisions of the Virginia resolutions into the enumeration of powers of Article
I I of the Constitution with accuracy, a matter of the greater
S
1
1
1
1
1 1
Tht refevant portions of the New York Conatitntion are given
for purposei of comparison: " The inpreme executive power and
authority of this State ihall be vested in a govemor." Art. xvii.
" He shall, by virtue of his office, be general and commander-in-chief
oi all the militia, and admiral of this state; he shall have power to
ccnvene the assembly and tenaie on extTtordinary occasions; to prologue them from time to time, provided snch prorogation shaH not
exceed sixty days in the space of any one year." Art. A ^ i L ^ ' I t
shall be. the tfrnty of the governor to in term the legislature at eygry
ytrtft-gl fhe condition nf rhr s»ate so lar as may concern his deparfc^.
mtnl; to recommend inch matters to their conSlflmtUtlt i i itaJl'T^pear to him to concern its good governmetit, welfare, and prosperity;
to correspond with the Canlinental Congress and other States; to
transact all necessary business with the officers of government, civil
and military; to take care chat the taws are faithfully executed to
the best ot his ability; and to expedite all such matters aa may be
resolved upon by the legislature." Art xix. The coundlfcf revision provision Ii of couiie but a modification ot the New York
facsimile of this document is published in Meigs,
Growth of the Consthution, foUowing p. 316. It " aU the ear
marks of a first draft, especially the iirtroductory statement of the
general principles on which a constitutLon should be drafted. Farraad, Records, voL ii, pp. 137-1 SO, ,
, ,
"This is a reasonable inference from the fact thai each danse is
ddecked off, and that amendments are writtenftitoit by .RuUedgt, the
chairman. Thai Rutledge was chairman is shown by the fart that
his name stands first in the list of members and also he made tbe
committee's report. Farrand, Records, vol. ii, pp. 97. 106, 176, iga
" The emendations are again in Rutledg* 1 hand. For text, witn
emendations, see ibid., voL ii, pp. 163-17$h
H
i
�T H E PRESIDENCY
I 12
CREATION OF T H E PRESIDENCY
R will be noted that only a single function connected w.th
importance as the enumeration then made was not subsequentJy changed by the Convention. In fact, it is possible to
do even more than this, for among Wilson's papers have been
discovered documents which illustrate the diflerent stages of
his work: the first consisting of a preamble, a part of a legislative article, and an outline of the remainder; the second,
which is incomplete, a first draft, from which the executive
article is missing, but which contained, pinned within it, the
excerpt of the Pinckney plan; the third, the final draft submitted for tbe committee's approval.
Since the committee was not al liberty to vary the principles of organization., the interest in this process centers
chiefly on the question of powers. How far would the committee go in adding other functions to those which the Convention had already sanctioned ?
Randolph was evidently not willing to go far. His draft
18
/
/
/
XN Al
^
' j
\
x
His pow«9 shall ber I. to carry into execution the national
laws; 2. to command and superintend the militia, 2- to direct their
discipline, 4. to direct the executives or the states tn call them or
any pari for the support of the national government, 5. to appoint to
offices not otherwise provided for, 6. to be removeable on impeachment, made by the house ofrepresentativesand conviction of malpractice or neglect of dnly, before the supreme judiciary, 7. to re'ceive a fixed compensation for the devotion of his time to the public
service the quantum of which shall be settled by the national legislature to be paid out of the national treasury, 8. to have a qualified
tive on legislative acts so as to require repassing by 3/3. 9.
shall swearfidelityto the union, as the legislature shall direct.
IA receiving ambassadors. II. commissioning officers. I i convene
legislature."
, d g n affairs was assigned the chief
ecei^ ambassadors. With the rest Randolph dealt m what
^ s t have seemed to tbe strong executive sup^rter^ > v £
cavalier fashion. Originally, m enumeraUng the legisUhve
^ e r s , he had induded the power - to make t « £ » o ^
under tbe foregoing restrictions. To make hcafcaof
or alliance under the foregoing restrict ons, and w A S ^ r n d e r of territory for an ^dvalen., and, m no
ease unless a superior tide - In the margm opposite each he
£ d " qu. as
Furtfcr b the hst he ^ u d r f f l *
nower "to send ambassadors."" In the final draft these
f0
J^
1*^
;
LD
LO
CD
Isj
CD
(3D
CD
CD
Article it is declared in Randolph's hand that
^ powers
destined for the senate peculiarly are 1. To - ^ ^ J ? .
commerce 2. to make peace 3- to appomt the j u d w
It may be that the original treaty-malong
^ description of legislative powers were deleted by San
£lphhiZelf,
the ex^Lnation bdng that befc*e
* * * *
I £>•
LO
of 7 e Senate was an open matter. In etther
Randolph regarded foreign affatrs as . :
tn
o
^
^
^
^
^
^
^
f w h r t o - d ambassadors, the executive power j £
iJeEmbassadors must have proved, as rt was doubtless
s
11
These identifications are Professor Farrand's. For the text
of these documents respectively, see ibid., vol. ii, pp. 150-151,
lSa-163, i6}-i7S. The text of the final report is given in vol ii,
pp. iTT-iSg.
W. M. Meigs, Growth of die Constitution, facsimile, sheets vi
and vii. Farraad, Records, voL ii, pp. 145-146. Certain portions of
-chis ennmeraiion are deleted in the draft as it stands today. Proiesjor Farraad prints these deletions as made by Randolph himself
It seems more reasonable to infer that where the deletions occur in
connectkm with emendaticas by Rutledge thai they were the rescdu
of committee action. This hypothesis is supported by the fact thai
tbe amendments are incorporated into Wilson's draft, proving that
tbey bad the whole committee's sanction. Some of die deletions
1 7
tn
p
^ i i
a
^ t h
c ^ ^ ^
^ r~^.„
faT^ore cbararferislic of Rntwere made with a careless vigor i*ntatoess.
u
L
r
v i i t o r
heists gsftflfsa—
—••
••
Farrand, Records, vol n, p. 145-
"a
m
m
if
�114
CR&ATIOy OP THE PRESIDENCY
show, giver the subject of control of foreign affairs no attention at all, the sole recorded reference to it being that in the
provisions of Hamilton's sketch whereby treaties should be
made and ambassadors named by the executive with the
advice and consent of the Senate. " That Randolph should
have given the topic the treatment he did is not to be wondered at in view of his weak executive proclivities, already
commented on. He had, indeed, previously declared it to be
his opinion that the Senate might sit constantly, " perhaps to
aid the executive." "
1
If the Rutledge emendations be accepted as tbe result of
committee action, it may be said that the other members
showed a tendency to correct the more manifest executive
weaknesses inherent in Randolph's language. Thus, where
Randolph provided onlj' for executive control of a militia the
/calling of which into service was to be dependent on the state
executives, the committee gave the much more far-reaching
power "to be Commander in Chief of the Land & Naval
Power of the Union t of the Militia of the sevl. States."
Other amendments added the powerto "pTppq«» tn the
Me—fngp Time to Time by bpeechor Mess such Mas
. concera this Union." and, inferentially, the pardon power,
which was declared not pleadable to an impeachment, substituted " Treason, Bribery or Corruption" for Randolph's
more general definition of grounds for impeachment, placed
the executive's salary and the question of hisfidelityto the
Union beyond legislative control, and limited the exceptions
to the executive appointing power to those enumerated in the
fundamental law."
With respect to the special senatorial powers, however, the
changes made were in the direction of making the upper
house the sole organ for controlling foreign affairs. The
power to send ambassadors was transferred from the general
" Farrand, Records, voL i, p. 292.
"Ibid., TO!, i, p. 415"W. i4. Meigs, Growth of the Canstitntion, fauhnlle, sheet vi;
Farraad, Records, vol E, p. 145.
THE PRESIDENCY I K THE FEDERAL CONVENTION
115
legislative to the special senatorial category, and in addition
Randolph's second clause was made to read, " to make treaties
ol peace and alliance." Also tht restrictions on the treatymaking power, which Randolph had originally included, disappeared.
^.
On a still more important point concessions were made to
the small state interest. The legislature was, of course, to
choose the executive. But was it to be by joint ballot or by
tbe two houses separately? More hinged on tbe decision
than appears on the surface. To die small state delegates
influence in election, we have seen, was the controlling factor.
A joint ballot would give them little advantage. A separate
ballot would make them tenacious of legislative choice.
Randolph's draft had dodged the issue by providing merely
tbat "the executive I. shall consist of a single person, 2.
who shall be elected bv tbe Legislature." Rutledge's first
emendation had been " by joint Banot. But later " joint"
was stricken out, and the whole dause made to read "who
shall be dected by the Legislature by ballot each Ho, havg.
a Negative on the other.''" Through Ellsworth's influence,
we may imagine, small State demands were thus completely
satisfied.
With the amended Randolph draft as the basis of his work,
Wilson now proceeded to draft the committee's repqrt^To
a far greater extent than Randolph, he was merely the draftsman. But neverthdess more significance attaches to his
work than a merely textual one. The choice of language,
especially as concerns the vesting clause, was a matterfcha^
might have, and in fact did have, most momentous consequences. We have seen that state practice had varied widdy,
and that, as a general rule, forms of expression had been
used which invited legislative interference. As might bave
been expected, Wilson fell into no such error. His draft of
the excerpt from the Pinckney plan was for a purpo*—
namdy, to utilize it, and through it the New York constrtu,,
•» Ibid.
�^
FfiiSlBENCY
T H E PRESIDHNCY I N T H E F S C E R A L CONVENTION
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With unimportant verba] changes, this draft became th,
fir merahon of the executive powers. The executive w h S i i r d
^
»«o power, and the power to execute the laws cam* «,,/„«.
Cc w: ' r
e
, o o p h o , ef o r
^
^ence. What have come to be known as the political
^ s were now the President's, and the President's alone
J ^ a r as the Constrtufaon itself could sett/e the matter The
V
Indeed, the inclusion of tbe important power of recommending measures to the legislature was, it is reasonable to
believe, if not determined, certainly strongly suggested by the
csistence of the Pinckney draft Again it may be true that
the power would have been included in any event, but the
(act remains that the Rutledge amendment is but the substance of Pinckney's provision, and the language used by
Wilson is that of his excerpt from Pinckney's draft. j : — It may, perhaps, be objected that Pinckney was, at!
only a copyist. To this it may be answered that tbe
ness to a n y over into the national government the poi
of the strongest state executive is the point at issue, rather^
chan a question of phraseology. Pinckney was willing to do
this, where Madison had been hesitant, had moved for a^
legislative definition of powers. The result was that the
committee had before it an extensive enumeration of executive powers which it indubitably used even to the extent of
adopting the title provided. This, it is believed, is sufficient
warrant for attributing to Pinckney a very real influenoe on
Article I I of thefinishedConstitution."
«L—
The greatest result of the committee's work was thus tbe jinclusion of one main element of the Wilson executive plan—
an independent possession by the executive department of its
powers by direct grant of the people. It remained to be seen
whether the other cardinal feature, election by a source independent of the legislature, could be secured.
There is one phase of the question of Wilson's choice of
vesting clause that should be noted, though tt can not be
answered, namely, whether or not the enumerated powers
were irrtemled by him or the committee to be an exhaustive
"It shonfd be observed that Pinckney had moved to strike out
Madison's motion to pennil the legislature to confer executive powers
on the chief magistrate on the grounds that the pow« was included'^
in tbe general power to execute the laws. It is nol a very, faf
fetched inference to conclude that his motive may have been a dislike for this way of giving the executive powers. On the other
hand H was Randolph who seconded him, and Randolph was hardly
actnated by this motive.
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�U.S. Constitution - Preamble
http://www.law.comell.edu/constitution/constitution.preamble.html
The Constitution of the United States of America
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.
• Table of Articles and Amendments
• Overview of Full Constitution
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�U.S. Constitution - Article II
*
http://www.law.comell.edu/constitution/constitution.articleii.html
Article II
Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall
hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same
term, be elected, as follows:
Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors,
equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the
Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the
United States, shall be appointed an elector.
The electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at
least shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves. And they shall make a list of all the
persons voted for, and of the number of votes for each; which list they shall sign and certify, and
transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate.
The President of the Senate shalCin the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives open all
the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes shall
Be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if there be
more than one who have such majority, and have an equal number of votes, then the House of
Representatives shall immediately choose by ballot one of them for President; and if no person have a
majority, then from the five highest on the list the said House shall in like manner choose the President.
But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each state
Having one vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two thirdi of the
statesrand a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. In every case, after the choice of the
President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be the Vice President. But
IFthere should remain two or more who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them by ballot
the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give
their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.
No person except a natural bom citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of
this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that
office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident
within the United States.
In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge
the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress
may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation or inability, both of the President and
Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly,
until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, a compensation, which shall neither be
increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive
within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.
Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:—"! do
solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and
will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Section 2. The President shall be commander in chief ofthe Army and Navy of the United States, and of
the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require
the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject
relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons
for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.
He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two
thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of
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�U.S. Constitution - Article II
*
http://www.law.comell.edu/constitution/constitution.articleii.html
the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges ofthe Supreme Court,
and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for,
and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such
inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of
departments.
The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate,
by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.
Section 3. He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and
recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on
extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between
them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think
proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be
faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.
Section 4. The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed
from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors.
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�-'842
F K A N K I. ] N
SIXTH
D.
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ANNT5AL M E S S A G E .
T H E W H I T E HOUSE, January ^,
'dm
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Congress of the Uniud States:
In reporting on the state of the Nation, I have felt it necessary on
previous occasions to advise the Congress of disturbance abroad and
of tlie need of putting our own house in order in the face of storm
signals from across the seas. As this Seventy-sixth Congresp opens
there is need for further warning.
A war which threatened to envelop the world in flames lias been
averted, but it has become ine.icasingly clear that peace is not. assured.
A l l about us rage undeclared wars—military and economic. A l l
about, us grow more deadly annnmonts—miiitary and economic.
All about us are threats of new aggression—military and economic.
Storms from abroad directly challenge three institutions indispensable to Americans, now as always. The first is religion. I t is
the source of the other two—democracy and international good faith.
Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the individual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself
by respecting his neighbors.
Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among
free, men to respect the rights and lil>ei ties of their fellows.
International good faith, a sister of democracy, springs from the
will of civilized nations of men to respect the rights and liberties of
other nations of men.
In a modern civilization, all three—religion, democracy, and international good faith—complement each other.
Where freedom of religion has been attacked, the attack has come
from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been
overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where
religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in
international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute
force.
An ordering of society which relegates religion, democracy, and
good faith among nations to tlie background can find no place within
it for the ideals of the Prince of Peace. The United States rejects
such an ordering and retains its ancient faith.
There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare
to defend not their homes alone but tlie tenets of faith and humanity
on which their churches, their governments, and their very civilization are founded. The defense of religion, of democracy, and of
good faith among nations is all tlie same fight. To save one we must
now make up our minds to save all.
We know what might happen to us of the United States i f the
new philosophies of force were to encompass the other continents
and invade our own. We, no more than other nations, can afford to
bo surrounded by the enemies of our faith and our humanity. Fortunate it is, therefore, that in this Western Hemisphere we have,
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uixler a common idonl of democratic government, a rich diversity of
resoiures and of jHiopli-s functioning together in mutual respect and
peace.
That hemisphere, that peace, and that ideal we propose to do our
share in protect ing against storms from any quarter. Our people
and our icsouices arc pledged to secure that protection. From that
determination no American flinches.
This hy no means implies that the American Republics disassociate themselves from tlie nations of otlier continents—it does not
?nean the Americas against the rest of the world. We as one of the
Republics reiterate our willingness to help the cause of world peace.
We stand on our historic otfec to take counsel with all other nations of
the world to the end that aggression among them be terminated, that
lhe race of armaments cease and that commerce be renewed.
But the world has grown so small and weapons of attack so swift
that no nation can be safe in its will to peace so long as any other
single powerful nation refuses to settle its grievances at the council
table.
For i f any government bristling with implements of war insists 011
policies of force, weapons of defense give the only safety.
In our foreign relations we have learned from the past what not
to do. From new wars we have learned what we must do.
We have learned that effective timing of defense, and the distant
points from which attacks may be launched are completely diflerent
from what they were 20 years ago.
We have learned that survival cannot be guaranteed by arming after
the attack begins—for there is new range and speed to offense.
We have learned that long before any overt military act, aggression begins with preliminaries of propaganda, subsidized penetration, the loosening of ties of good will, the stirring of prejudice, and
the incitement to disunion.
We have learned that God-fearing democracies of the world which
observe the sanctity of treaties and good faith in their dealings with
other nations cannot safely be indifferent to international lawlessness anywhere. They cannot forever let pass, without effective protest, acts of aggression against sister nations—acts wliich automatically undermine all of us.
Uhviously they must proceed along practical, peaceful lines. But
the mere fact that we rightly decline to intervene with arms to prevent acts of aggression does not mean that we must act as i f there
were 1 0 aggression at all. Words may be futile, but war is not the
1
onl v means of commanding a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. There are many methods short of war, but stronger and more
effective than mere words, of bringing home to aggressor governme-iits the aggregate sentiments of our own people.
At the very least, we can and should avoid any action, or any
lack of action, which will encourage, assist, or build up an aggressor.
We have learned that when we deliberately try to legislate neutrality,
our neutrality laws may operate unevenly and tin fairly—may actually give aid to an aggressor and deny it to the victim. The instinct
of self-preservation should warn us that we ought not to let that
happen any more.
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D. R O O S E V E L T
And we have learned something else—the old, old lesson that
probability of attack is mightily decreased by the assurance of an
ever ready defense. Since 1931 world events of thunderous import
have moved with lightning speed. During these 8 years many of our
people clung to the hope that the innate decency of mankind would
protect the unprepared who showed their innate trust in mankind.
Today we are all wiser—and sadder.
Under modern conditions what we mean by "adequate defense"—
a policy subscribed to by all—must be divided into three elements.
First we must have armed forces and defenses strong enough to ward
off sudden attack against strategic positions and key facilities essential to ensure sustained resistance and ultimate victory. Sacondly,
we must have the organization and location of those key facilities
so that they may be immediately utilized and rapidly expanded to
meet all needs without danger of serious interruption by enemy
attack.
In the course of a few days I shall send you a special message,
making recommendations for those two essentials of aefense against
danger which we cannot safely assume will not come.
I f these first two essentials are reasonably provided for we must be
able confidently to invoke the third element, the underlying strength
of citizenship—the self-confidence, the ability, the imagination, and
the devotion that give the staying power to see things through.
A strong and united nation may be destroyed i f it is unprepared
against sudden attack. But even a nation well armed and well
organized from a strictly military standpoint, may, after a period of
time, meet defeat if it is unnerved by self-distrust, endangered by
class prejudice, by dissension between capital and labor, by false
economy, and by other unsolved social problems at home.
In meeting the troubles of the world we must meet them as one
leople—with a unity born of the fact that for generations those who
lave come to our shores, representing many kindreds and tongues,
have been welded by common opportunity into a united patriotism.
I f another form of government can present a united front in its
attack on a democracy, the attack must oe met by a united democracy.
Such a democracy can and must exist in the United States.
A dictatorship may command the f u l l strength of a regimented
nation. But the united strength of a democratic nation can be mustered only when its people, educated by modern standards to know
what is going on and where they are going, have conviction that they
are receiving as large a share of opportunity for development, as
large a share of material success and of human dignity, as they have
a right to receive.
Our Nation's program of social and economic reform is therefore
a part of defense as basic as armaments themselves.
Against the background of events in Europe, in Africa, aiid<in
Asia during these recent years, the pattern of what we have accomplished since 1933 appears in even clearer focus.
For the first time we have moved upon deep-seated problems affecting our national strength and have forged national instruments adequate to meet them.
Consider what tlie seemingly piecemeal struggles of these G years
add up to in terms of realistic national preparedness.
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We are conserving and developing natural resources—land, water,
power, forests.
We are trying to provide necessary food, shelter, and medical care
for the health of our population.
We are putting agriculture—our system of food and fiber supply—
on a sounder basis.
We are strengthening the weakest spot in our system of industrial
supply—its long-smoldering labor difficulties.
We have cleaned up our credit system so that depositor and investor alike may more readily and willingly make their capital available for peace or war.
We are giving to our youth new opportunities for work and
education.
We have sustained the morale of all the population by the dignified
recognition of our obligat ions to the aged, the helpless, and the needy.
Above all, we have made the American people conscious of their
interrelationship and their interdependence. They sense a common
destiny—and a common need of each other. Differences of occupation, geography, race, and religion no longer obscure the Nation's
fundamental unity in thought and in action.
We have our difficulties, true—but we are a wiser and a tougher
Nation than we were in 1929, or 1932.
Never have there been 6 years of such far-flung internal preparedness in our history. And all this has been done without any dictator's power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps, and without a scratch
on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or tlie rest of the Bill
of Rights.
We sec things now that we could not see along the way. The tools
of government which we had in 1933 are outmoded. We have had to
forge new tools for a new role of government in democracy—a role
of new responsibility for new needs and increased responsibility for
old needs, long neglected.
Some of these tools had to be roughly shaped and still need some
machining down. Many of those who fought bitterly against the
forging of these new tools welcome their use today. The American
people, as a whole, have accepted them. The Nation looks to the
Congress to improve the new machinery which we have permanently
installed, provided that in the process the social usefulness of the
machinery is not destroyed or impaired.
All of us agree that we should simplify and improve laws i f experience and oj>eration clearly demonstrate the neea. For instance, all
of us want better provision for our older people under our social
security legislation. For the medically needy we must provide better
care.
Most of us agree that for the sake of employer and employee alike
we must find ways to end factional labor strife and employer-employee disputes.
Most of us recognize that none of these tools can be put to maximum effectiveness unless the executive processes of government are
revamped—reorganized, if you will—into more effective combination.
And even after suchreorganizationit will take time to develop administrative personnel and experience in order to use our new tools
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FRANKLIN
D.
ROOSEVELT
with a minimum of mistakes. The Congress, of course, needs no
further information on this.
With this exception of legislation to provide greater Government
efficiency, and with the exception of legislation to ameliorate our railroad ana other transportation problems, the past three Congresses
have met, in part or in whole, the pressing neeas of the new order of
things.
We have now passed the period of internal conflict in the launching of our program of social reform. Our f u l l energies may now be
released to invigorate the processes of recovery in order to preserve
our reforms, and to give every man and woman who wants to work
a real job at a living wage.
But time is of paramount importance. The deadline of danger
from within and from without is not within our control. The hourglass may be in the hands of other nations. Our own hourglass tells
us that we are off on a race to make democracy work, so that we may
be efficient in peace and therefore secure in self-defense.
This time element forces us to still greater efforts to attain the f u l l
employment of our labor and our capital.
The first duty of our statesmanship today is to bring capital and
manpower together.
Dictatorships do this by main force. By using main force they
apparently succeed at it—for the moment. However, we abhor their
methods^ we are compelled to admit that they have obtained substantial utilization of all their material and human resources. Like it
or not they have solved, for a time at least, the problem of idle men
and idle capital. Can we compete with them by boldly seeking
methods of putting idle men and idle capital together and, at the same
time, remain within our American way of life, within the Bill of
Rights, and within the bounds of what is, from our point of view,
civilization itself?
We suffer from a great unemployment of capital. Many people
have the idea that as a nation we are overburdened with debt and are
spending more than we can afford. That is not so. Despite our Federal Government expenditures the entire debt of our national economic
system, public and private together, is no larger today than it was
in 1929, and the interest thereon is far less than it was in 1929.
The object is to put capital—private as well as public—to work.
We want to get enougn capital and labor at work to give us a total
turnover of business, a total national income, of at least eighty billion
dollars a year. At that figure we shall have a substantial reduction
of unemployment; and the Federal revenues will be sufficient to balance the current level of cash expenditures on the basis of the existing tax structure. That figure can be attained, working within the
framework of our traditional profit system.
The factors in attaining and maintaining that amount of national
income are many and complicated.
They include more widespread understanding among businessmen
of many changes which world conditions and technological improvements have brought to our economy over the last 20 years—changes
in the interrelationship of price and volume and employment, for
instance—changes of the kind in which businessmen are now educating themselves through opportunities like the so-called monopoly
investigation.
�Sixth Annual
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They include a perfecting of our farm program to protect farmers'
income and consumers' purchasing power from alternate risks of crop
gluts and crop shortages.
They include wholenearted acceptance of new standards of honesty
in our financial markets.
They include reconcilement of enormous, antagonistic interestssome of them long in litigation—in the railroad and general transportation field.
They include the working out of new techniques—private, State,
and Federal—to protect the public interest in and to develop wider
markets for electric power.
They include a revamping of the tax relationships between Federal,
State, and local units or government, and consideration of relatively
small tax increases to adjust inequalities without interfering with the
aggregate income of the American people.
They include the perfecting of labor organization and a universal
ungrudging attitude by employers toward the labor movement, until
there is a minimum of interruption of production and employment because of disputes, and acceptance by labor of the truth that the welfare of labor itself depends on increased balanced output of goods.
To be immediately practical, while proceeding with a steady evolution in the solving of these and like problems, we must wisely use
instrumentalities, like Federal investment, which are immediately
available to us.
Here, as elsewhere, time is the deciding factor in our choice of
remedies.
Therefore, it does not seem logical to me—at the moment we seek
to increase production and consumption—for the Federal Government
to consider a drastic curtailment of its own investments.
The whole subject of Government investing and Government income is one which may be approached in two different ways.
The first calls for the elimination of enough activities of government to bring the expenses of government immediately into balance
with income of government. This school of thought maintains that
because our national income this year is only sixty billion dollars,
ours is only a sixty-billion-dollar country; that government must
treat it as such; and that without the help of government, it may
some day, somehow, happen to become an eighty-billion-dollar
country.
I f the Congress decides to accept this point of view, it will logically
have to reduce the present functions or activities of government by
one-third. The Congress will have to accept the responsibility for
such reduction; and the Congress will have to determine which
activities are to be reduced.
Certain expenditures we cannot possibly reduce, such as the interest
on the public debt. A few million dollars saved here or there in the
normal or in curtailed work of the old Departments and Commissions
will make no great saving in the Federal Budget. Therefore, the
Congress would have to reduce drastically some of certain large
items, such as aids to agriculture and soil conservation, veterans' pensions, flood control, highways, waterways, and other public works,
grants for social and health security, Civilian Conservation Corps
activities, relief for the unemployed, or national defense.
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D. ROOSEVELT
The Congress alone has the power to do all this, as it is the appropriating branch of the Government.
The otlier approach to the question of Government spending takes
the position that this Nation ought not to be and need not be only a
sixty-billion-dollar nation; that at this moment i t has the men and
the resources sufficient to make it at least an eighty-billion-dollar
nation. This school of thought does not believe that it can become
an eighty-billion-dollar nation in the near future i f government cuts
its operations by one-third. I t is convinced that i f we were to try it,
we would invite disaster—that we would not long remain even a
sixty-billion-dollar nation. There are many complicated factors with
which we have to deal, but we have learnea that it is unsafe to make
abrupt reductions at any time in our net expenditure program.
By our common-sense action of resuming Government activities
last spring we have reversed a recession and started the new rising
tide of prosperity and national income which we are now just beginning to enjoy.
I f Government activities are fully maintained, there is a good prospect of our becoming an eighty-billion-dollar country in a very short
time. With such a national income, present tax laws will yield
enough each year to balance each year's expenses.
It is my conviction that down in their hearts the American public—
industry, agriculture, finance—wants this Congress to do whatever
needs to be Bone to raise our national income to eighty billion dollars
a year.
Investing soundly must preclude spending wastefully. To guard
against opportunist appropriations, I have on several "occasions addressed the Congress on the importance of permanent long-range
planning. I hope, therefore, that following my recommendation of
last year, a permanent agency will be set up and authorized to report
on the urgency and desirability of the various types of government
investment.
Investment for prosperity can be made in a democracy.
I hear some people say, "This is all so com dicated. There are
certain advantages in a dictatorship. I t gets rid of labor trouble, of
unemployment, of wasted motion, and of having to do your own
thinking."
My answer is, "Yes; but it also gets rid of some other things which
we Americans intend very definitely to keep—and we still intend to
do our own thinking."
I t will cost us taxes and the voluntary risk of capital to attain some
of the practical advantages wliich other forms of government have
acquired.
Dictatorship, however, involves costs whicli the American people
will never pay: The cost of our spiritual values. The cost of the
blessed right of being able to say what we please. The cost of freedom of religion. The cost of seeing our capital confiscated. The
cost of being cast into a concentration camp. The cost of being
afraid to walk down the street with the wrong neighbor. The cost
of having our children brought up not as free and dignified human
beings, but as pawns molded and enslaved by a machine.
I f the avoidance of these costs means taxes on mv income; i f avoiding these costs means taxes on my estate at death, *! would bear those
�2849
Seventh Annual Message
taxes willingly as the price of my breathing and my children breathing the free air of a free country, as the price of a living and not a
dead world.
Events abroad have made it increasingly clear to the American
people that dangers within are less to be feared than dangers from
without. I f , therefore, a solution of this problem of idle men and
idle capital is the price of preserving our liberty, no formless selfish
fears can stand in our way.
Once I prophesied that this generation of Americans had a rendezvous with destiny. That prophesy comes true. To us much is given;
more is expected.
This generation will "nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of
earth
* • The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just—a way
which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must
forever bless."
SEVENTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.
THE
WHITE
HOUSE,
January S, 1940.
To tke Congress oj the United States:
As the Congress reassembles, the impact of wars abroad makes i t
natural to approach "the state of the Union" through a discussion of
foreign affairs.
But i t is important that those who hear and read this message
should in no way confuse that approach with any thought that our
Government is abandoning, or even overlooking, the great significance
of its domestic policies.
The social and economic forces whicli have been mismanaged
abroad until they have resulted in revolution, dictatorship, and war
arc the same as those which we here are struggling to adjust peacefully
at home.
You are well aware that dictatorships—and the philosophy of force
which justifies and accompanies dictatorships—have originated in
almost every case in the necessity for drastic action to improve internal conditions where democratic action for one reason or another has
failed to respond to modern needs and modern demands.
I t was with farsighted wisdom that the framers of the Constitution
• brought together in one magnificent phrase three great concepts—
"common defense," "general welfare," and "domestic tranquillity."
More than a century and a half later we still believe with them that
our best defense is the promotion of our general welfare and domestic
trftiiquillity.
In previous messages to the Congress I have repeatedly warned
that, whether we like it or not, the daily lives of American citizens will,
of necessity, feel the shock of events on other continents. This is no
�28l8
2810
Third Annual Message
:
F R A-N k _t I N .,D . R 0 0 S E V E L T
-•r-^rs".
sands in our various public-agencies spread: throughout the country
who, without compensation^ agreed to take over heavy responsibilities in connection with our various loan agencies, and particularly in
direct relief work, I cannot say too much. I do not think any country
could show a higher average'of cheerful and even enthusiastic teamwork than has been shown by these men and women,
'i-pcamiot with candbry^/you-;that general intemational relationships outside the; borders of'thei United States are'improved. On the
surface of things many^ldf jefdbusie^ are resurrected, old passions
artfused j'new stjivings vfor ahnament and power, in more than one
land, rear their ugly'heads. I hope that calm counsel and constructive leadership will provide the steadying influence and the time necessary for the coming of new and more practical forms of representative government throughout the world wherein privilege and power
will occupy a lessor place and world welfare a greater.
I believe, however, that our own peaceful and neighborly attitude
toward other nations is coming to be understood and appreciated.
The maintenance of international peace is a matter in wluch we are
deeply and unselfishly'concerned. Evidence of our persistent and
undeniable desire to prevent armed conflict has recently been more
than once aflfordediV^;^^ /
- There is^no ground for apprehension that our relations with any
nation will be otherwise than peaceful. Nor is there ground for doubt
that the people of most nations seek relief from the threat and burden attaching to the false theory thot extravagant armament cannot
be reduced and limited by intemational accord.
The ledger of the past year shows many more gains than losses.
Let us not forget that, in addition to saving millions from utter destitution, child labor hos-beon for the moment outlawed, thousands of
homes saved to their owners and most important of all, the morale of
the nation has been restored. Viewing the year 1934 as a whole, you
and I can agree that we haye a generous measure of reasons for giving
thanks.
It is not empty optimism that moves me to a strong hope in the
coining year. We can,. if£w.e' will,, make 1935 a- genuine period of
good feeling, sustained by^.ti sense of purposeful progress. Beyond
the material recovery, I sense a. spiritual recovery as-well. The
people of America are turning : as. never before to those permanent
values that are not limited to the physical objectives of life. There
are growing signs of this on every hand. In the face of these spiritual
impulses we are sensible of the Divine Providence to which nations
turn now, as always, for guidance and fostering care.
I
1
'f.-v
;•'
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•S
•I
THIRD ANNUAL MESSAGE.
THE WHITE
Houst, January 3,1036.
Mr. PBESIDENT, Mr. SFEAKEB, MEMBERS or T H E SENATE AND OF THE
HOUSE OF REP HESE NTATIVES :
We are about to enter upon another year of the responsibility
which the electorate of the United States has placed in our hands.
Having come thus far, it is fitting that we should pause to survey
the ground which we have covered and the path which lies ahead.
On the 4th day of March 1933, on the occasion of taking the oath
of office as President of the United States, I addressed the people
of our country. Need I recall either the scene or the national circumstances attending the occasion ? The crisis of that moment was
almost exclusively a national one. In recognition of that fact, so
obvious to the millions in the streets and in the homes of America,
I devoted by far the greater part of that address to what I called,
and the Nation called, critical days within our own borders.
You will remember that on that 4th day of March 1933, the world
picture was an image of substantial peace. International consultation and widespread hope for the bettering of relations between
the nations gave to all of us a reasonable expectation that the barriers to mutual confidence, to increased trade, and to the peaceful
settlement of disputes could be progressively removed. In fact my
only reference to the field of world policy in that address was in
thep"; words: " I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of tho
good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and,
because he does so, respects the rights of others—a neighbor who
respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements
in and with a world of neighbors."
In the years that have followed that sentiment has remained the
dedication of this Nation. Among the nations of the great Westetn
, Hemisphere the policy of the good neighbor has happily prevailed.
At no time in the four and a half centuries of modern civilization in
the Americas has tKcre existed—in any year, any decade, or any
generation in all that time—a greater spirit of mutual understanding,
of common helpfulness, and of devotion to the ideals of self-government than exists today in the 21 American Republics and their neighbor, the Dominion of Canada. This policy of the good neighbor
among the Americas is no longer a hope—no longer an-objective
fomaining to be accomplished; it is a fact, active, present, pertinent,
and effective. In this ochicvement every American nation takes an
1
�2820
FRANKLIN
D.
ROOSEVELT
understanding part. There is neither war nor rumor of war nor
desire for war. The inhabitants of this vast area, 250,000,000 strong,
spreading more than 8,000 miles from the Arctic to the Antarctic,
believe in and propose to follow the policy of the good neighbor;
and they wish with all their heart that the rest of the world might
do likewise.
The rest of the world-r-ah, there's the rub.
Were I today to^deliver an inaugural address to the people of the
• United States I could not limit my comments on world affairs to one
paragraph. With much regret I should be compelled to devote the
greater part to world affairs. Since the summer of that same year
of 1933 the temper and. the purposes of the rulers of many of the
great populations in Europe and Asia have not pointed the way
either to peace or to good will among men. Not only have peace and
good will among men grown more remote in those areas of the earth
during this period, but a point has been reached where the people of
the Americas must take cognizance of growing ill will, of marked
trends toward aggression, of increasing armaments, of shortening
tempera—a situation which has in it many of the elements that lead
to tbe tragedy of general war.
On those other continents many nations, principally the smaller
peoples, if left to themselves, would be content with their boundaries
and willing to solve within themselves and in cooperation with their
neighbors their individual problems, both economic and social. The
rulers of those nations, deep in their hearts, follow these peaceful
and reasonable aspirations of their peoples. These rulers must remain ever vigilant against the possibility today or . tomorrow of
invasion or attack by the rulers of other peoples who fail to subscribe to the principles of bettering the human race by peaceful
means.
And within those other nations—those which today must bear
the primary, definite responsibility for jeopardizing world peace- what hope lies? To say the least, there are grounds for pessimism.
It is idle for us or for others to preach that the masses of the people
who constitute those nations which are dominated by the twin
spirits of autocracy and aggression are out of sympathy with their
rulers, that they are allowed no opportunity to express themselves,
that they would change things if they could.
That, unfortunately, is not so clear. It might be true that the
masses of the people in those nations would change the policies of
their governments if they could be allowed full freedom, full access
to the processes of democratic government as we understand them.
But they do not have that access: Lacking it they follow blindly
and fervently the lead of those who seek autocratic power.
Third Annual Message
2821
Nations seeking expansion, seeking the rectification of injustice
springing from former wars, or seeking outlets for trade, for population, or even for their own peaceful contributions to the prog
of civilization, fail to demonstrate that patience necessary to attain
reasonable and legitimate objectives by peaceful negotiation or by
an appeal to the finer instincts of world justice.
They have therefore impatiently reverted to the old belief in the
law of the sword, or to the fantastic conception that they, and they
alone, are chosen to fulfill a mission and that all the others among
the billion and a half of human beings in the world must and shall
leam from and be subject to them.
I recognize and you will recognize that these words which I have
chosen with deliberation will not prove popular in any nation that
chooses to fit this shoe to its foot. Such sentiments, however, will
find sympathy and understanding in those nations where the people
themselves are honestly desirous of peace but must constantly aline
themselves on one side or tlie other in the kaleidoscopic jockeying
for position that is" characteristic of European and Asiatic relations
today. For the peace-loving nations, and there are many of them,
find that their very identity depends on their moving and moving
again on the chessboard of international politics.
I suggested in the spring of 1933 that 85 or 90 percent of all the
people in the world were content with the territorial limits of their
respective nations and were willing further to reduce their armed
forces if every other nation in the world would agree to do likew
That is equally true today, and it is even more true today that
world peace and world good will are blocked by only 10 or 15 percent
of the world's population. That is why efforts to reduce armies have
thus far not only failed but have been met by vastly increased armaments on land and in the air and that is why even efforts to continue
the existing limits on naval armaments into the years to come show
such little current success.
But the policy of the United States has been clear and consistent We have sought with earnestness in every possible way
to limit world armaments and to attain the peaceful solution of
disputes among all nations.
We have sought by every legitimate means to exert our moral
influence against repression, against discrimination, against intolerance and autocracy, and in favor of freedom of expression, equality
before the law, religious tolerance, and popular rule.
In the field of commerce we have undertaken to encourage a more
reasonable interchange of the world's goods. In the field of international finance we have, so far as we are concerned, put an end to
dollar diplomacy, to money grabbing, to speculation for the benefit
of the powerful and rich, at the expense of the small and the poor.
�2822
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FRANKLIN
D. R O O S E V E L T
As a consistent part^of^a clear policy, the United States is following a twofold neutrality toward any and all nations wliich
engage in wars that are not of immediate concern to the Americas.
Firstf we decline to encourage the prosecution of war by permitting
belligerents to obtain arms, ammunition, or implements of war from
the United States.. Second, we seek to discourage the use by belligerent nations of any and all American products' calculated to
facilitate the prosecution of a war in quantities over and above our
normal exports to them in time of peace.
I trust that these clear objectives thus unequivocally stated will
be carried forward by cooperation between this Congress and the
President.
I realize that I have emphasized to you the gravity of the situation
which confronts the people of the world. This emphasis is justified
because of its importance to civilization and therefore to the United
States. Peace is jeopardized by the few and not by the many.
Peace is threatened by those who seek selfish power. The world has
witnessed similar eras—as in the days when petty kings and feudal
barons were changing the map of Europe every fortnight, or when
great emperors and great kings were engaged in a mad scramble for
colonial empire. • ^'ftfiit.'-•. •
•
~ We hope that we are Vot again at the threshold of such an era.
But i f face it we must;'then the United States and the rest of the
Americas can play but one' role: Through a well-ordered neutrality
to do naught to encourage the contest, through adequate defense to
save ourselves from embroilment and attack, and through example
and all legitimate encouragement and assistance to persuade other
nations to return to the days of peace and good will.
The evidence before us clearly proves that autocracy in world
affairs endangers peace and that such threats do not spring from those
nations devoted to the democratic ideal. I f this he true in world
affairs, it should have the greatest weight in the determination of
domestic policies. ;
•
;'" Within democratic ^hations the-chief concern of the people is to
prevent the continuation or the rise of autocratic institutions that
beget slavery at home and aggression abroad. Within our borders,
as in the world at large, popular opinion is at war with a powerseeking minority.
That is no new thing. I t was fought out in the Constitutional
Convention of 1787. From time to time since then the battle has
been continued, under Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Theodore
Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
In these later years we have witnessed the domination of government byfinancialand industrial groups, numerically small but politi-
Third Annual Message
J
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2823
. cally dominant in the 12 years that succeeded the World War. The
present group of which I speak is, indeed, numerically small and,
while it exercises a large influence and has much to say in the worldof business, it does not, I am confident, speak the true sentiments of
the less articulate but more important elements that constitute real
American business.
I go back once more. I n March 1933 I appealed to the Congress
of the United States and to the people in a new effort to restore power
to those to whom it rightfully belonged. The response to that appeal
resulted in the writing of a new chapter in the history of popular
government. You, the Members of the legislative branch, and I , the
Executive, contended for and established a new relationship between
government and people.
What were the terms of that new relationship? They were an appeal from the clamor of many private and selfish interests, yes, an
appeal from the clamor of partisan interest, to the ideal of the public
interest. Government became the representative and the trustee of
the public interest. Our aim was to build upon essentially democratic institutions, seeking all the while the adjustment of burdens,
the help of the needy, the protection of the weak, the liberation of the
exploited, and the genuine protection of the people's property.
I t goes without saying that to create such an economic constitutional order more than a single legislative enactment was called for.
We had to build, you in the Congress and I , as the Executive, upon a
broad base. Now, after 34 months of work, we contemplate a fairly
rounded whole. We have returned the control of the Federal
Government to the city of Washington.
To be sure, in so doing, we have invited battle. We have earned
the hatred of entrenched greed. The very nature of the problem
that we faced made it necessary to drive some people from power
and strictly to regulate others. I made that plain when I took the
oath of office in March 1933. I spoke of the practices of the unscrupulous money changers who stood indicted in the court of public
opinion. I spoke of the rulers of the exchanges of mankind's goods,
who failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence. I said that they had admitted their failure and had abdicated.
Abdicated? Yes, in 1933; but now with the passing of danger
thoy forget their damaging admissions and withdraw their
abdication.
They offer, they seek, let us put it that way, the restoration of
their selfish power. They offer to lead us back round the same old
corner into the same old dreary street.
^Yet they are still determined groups that are intent upon that very
thing. Rigorously held up to popular examination their true char-
�MY
2824
F R AN KL I N
ROOSEVELT
acUr presents itself. They steal the livery, of great national constitutional ideals to serve' discredited special interests. As guardians
and trustees for great groups of individual stockholders they wrongfully seek to carry the property and the interests entrusted to them
into the arena of partisan politics. They seek—this minority in
business and industry—to control and often do control and use for
their own purposes legitimate and highly honored business associations; they engage in vast propaganda to spread fear and discord
among the people—they would "gang up" against the people's
liberties.
Tha principle that they would instill into government if they
succeed in seizing power is well shown by the principles which many
of them have instilled into their own affairs: autocracy toward
labor, toward stockholders, toward consumers, toward sentiment
Autocrats in smaller things, they seek autocracy in bigger things.
By their fruits ye shall know them."
If these gentlemen believe, as they say they believe, that the
measures adopted by this Congress and its predecessor, and carried
out by this administration, have hindered rather than promoted
recovery, let them be consistent Let them propose to this Congress
the complete repeal of these measures. The way is open to such a
proposal.
In other words, let action be positive and not negative. The way
is open in the Congress, of the United States for an expression of
opinion by yeas and nays. Shall we say that values are restored
and that the Congress will, therefore, repeal the laws under which
we have been bringing them back? Shall we say that because
national income has grown with rising prosperity we shall repeal
existing taxes and thereby put off the day of approaching a balanced
budget and of starting to reduce the national debt? Shall we
abandon the reasonable support and regulation of banking? Shall
we restore the dollar to its former gold content? Shall we say to
the farmer, The prices for your products are in part restored; now
go and hoe your own row?" Shall we say to the home owners, " We
have reduced your rates of interest—we have no further concern
with how you keep your home or what you pay for your money; that
is your affair" ? Shall we say to the several millions of unemployed
citizens who face the very problem of existence—yes, of getting
enough to eat—"We will withdraw from giving you work; we will
turn you back to tlie charity of your communities and to those men
of selfish power who tell you that perhaps they will employ you if
the Government leaves them strictly alone"? Shall we say to the
needy unemployed," Your problem is a local one except that perhaps the Federal Government, as an act of mere generosity, will be
;
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Third Annual Message
2825
willing to pay to your city or to your county a few grudging dollars
to help maintain your soup kitchens "? Shall we say to the children
who have worked all day in the factory, " Child labor is a local issUe.
and so are your starvation wages; something to be solved or left unsolved by the jurisdiction of 48 States"? Shall we say to the laborer, " Your right to organize, your relations with your employer
have nothing to do with the public interest; if your employer will
not even meet with you to discuss your problems and his, that is non«
of our affair"? Shall we say to the unemployed and the aged,
" Social security lies not within the province of the Federal Government; you must seek relief elsewhere"? Shall we say to the men
and women who live in conditions of squalor in country and in city,
"The health and the happiness of you and your children are no
concern of ours"! Shall we expose our population once more by
the repeal of laws to protect them against the loss of their honest
investments and against the manipulations of dishonest speculators?
Shall we abandon the splendid efforts of the Federal Government to
raise the health standards of the Nation and to give youth a decent
opportunity through such means as the Civilian Conservation Corps?
Members of the Congress, let these challenges be met. I f this
is what these gentlemen want, let them say so to the Congress of
the United States. Let them no longer hide their dissent in a
cowardly cloik of generality. Let them define the issue. We have
been specific in our affirmative action. Let them be specific in their
negative attack.
But the challenge faced by this Congress is more menacing than
merely areturnto the past—bad as that would be. Our resplendent
economic autocracy does not want to return to that individualism of
which they prate, even though the advantages under that system
went to the ruthless and the strong. They realize that in 34 months
we have built up new instruments of public power. In the hands
of a people's government this power is wholesome and proper. But
in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such
power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people. Give
them their way and they will take the course of every autocracy of
the past—power for themselves, enslavement for the public.
And their weapon is the weapon of fear. I have said, " The only
thing we have to fear is fear itself." That is as true today as it
was in 1933. But such fear as they instill today is not a natural
fear, a normal fear; it is a synthetic, manufactured, poisonous fear
that is being spread subtly, expensively, and cleverly by the same
people who cried in those other days, " Save us, save us, else we
perish."
�I':
2826
FRAN-KLlN
D. ROOSEVELT
Fourth Annual
I am confident (hat the Congress of the United States well understands the facts and is ready to wage unceasing warfare against
those who seek a continuation of that spirit of fear. The carrying
out of the laws of the land as enacted by the Congress requires
protection until final adjudication by the highest tribunal of the
land. The Congress has the right and can find the means to protect
its own prerogatives.
We are justified in our present confidence. Restoration of national
income, which shows continuing gains for the third successive year,
supports the normal and logical policies under which agriculture
and industry are returning to f u l l activity. Under these policies we
approach a balanc* of the National Budget. National income
increases; tax receipts, based on that income, increase without the
levying of new taxes. That is why I am able to say to this, the
second session of the Seventy-fourth Congress, that based on existing
laws i t is my belief that no new taxes, over and above the present
taxes, are either advisable or necessary.
National income increases;, employment increases. Therefore, we
can look forward to a reduction in the number of those citizens who
reduction in our
/
in the light of
the increasing effectiveness of the restoration of popular rule, I
recommend to the Congress that we advance; and that we do not
retreat I have confidence—confidence that you w i l l not f a i l the
people of the Nation whose mandate you have already so f a i t h f u l l y
fulfilled.
I repeat, with the same faith and the same determination, my
words of March 4, 1933—" We face the arduous days that lie before
us in the warm courage of national unity; with a clear consciousness
of seeking old and precious moral values; with a clean satisfaction
that comes f r o m the stern performance of duty by old and young
alike. We aim at the assurance of ,a rounded and pemnuient national
life. We do not distrust the future of essential democracy."
I cannot better end this Message on the state of the Union than by
repeating the words of a wise philosopher at whose feet I sat many
yean ago:
What p-eot crises tench aU men whom the example and counsel of the brave
inspire is this lesson: Fenr not, view all the tusks of life as sacred, have faitli
in the triumph of the Ideal, give dally all that you have to give, be loyal and
rejolco whenever you llnd yourselves part of a great Ideal enterprise. You
at this moment have lhe honor to belong to a generation whose lips are
touched by Are You live In a land that now.enjoys the blessings of peace. But
let nothing human he wholly alien from yon. The human race now passes
throuxb ooe of Its great crises. New ideas, new issues—a new call for men
to carry on the work of righteousness, of charity, of courage, of patience, and
of loyalty • • •. However, memory brings back this moment to your minds,
let It be able to say to you: That was a great moment It was the beginning
of a new era. • • • This world in its crisis called for volunteers, for men
-'•
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Message
2827
of faith in life, of patience ih service, of charity and of insight. I responded
to the call however I could. I volunteered to give myself to my Master—
the cause of humane and brave living. I studied, I loved, I labored, unsparingly and hopefully, to be worthy of my generation.
FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.
THE WHITE HOUSE, January
6,1937.
To the Congress of the United
States:
For the first time in our national history a President delivers his
Annual Message to a new Congress w i t h i n a f o r t n i g h t of the expiration of his term of office. While there is no change in the Presidency this year, change w i l l occur i n future years. I t is my belief
that under this new constitutional practice the President should in
every 'fourth year, insofar as seems reasonable, review the existing
state of our national affairs and outline broad f u t u r e problems, leaving specific recommendations f o r future legislation to be made by
the President about to be inaugurated.
A t this time, however, circumstances of the moment compel me to
ask your immediate consideration o f : First, measures extending the
life of certain authorizations and powers which, under present statutes, expire within a few weeks; second, an addition to the existing
Neutrality Act to cover specific points raised by the unfortunate
civil strife i n Spain; and, t h i r d , a deficiency appropriation b i l l f o r
which I shall submit estimates this week.
I n March 1933 the problems which faced our nation, and which
only our national government had the resources to meet, were more
serious even than appeared on the surface.
I t was not only that the visible mechanism of economic l i f e had
.broken down. More disturbing was the fact that long neglect of
the needs of the underprivileged had brought too many of our people to the verge of doubt as to the successful adaptation of our
historic traditions to the complex modem world. I n that lay a
challenge to our democratic form of government itself.
Ours was the task to prove that democracy could be made to
function i n the world of today as effectively as i n the simpler world
of a hundred years ago. Ours was the task to do more than to argue
a theory. The times required the confident answer of performance
to those whose instinctive f a i t h in humanity made them want to
believe that in the long run democracy would prove superior to more
extreme forms of government as a process of getting action when
action was wisdom, without the spiritual sacrifices which those other
forms of government exact.
That challenge we met. To meet i t required unprecedented activities under Federal leadership—to end abuses—to restore a large
measure of material prosperity—to give new f a i t h to millions of our
�2826
FRANKLIN
D. R O O S E V E L T
2827
Fourth Annual Message
I am confident that the Congress of the United States well understands the facts and is ready to wage unceasing warfare against
those who seek a continuation of that spirit of fear. The carrying
out of the Jaws of the land as enacted by the Congress requires
protection until final adjudication by the highest tribunal of the
land. The Congress has the right and can find the means to protect
its own prerogatives.
We are justified in our present confidence. Restoration of national
income, which shows continuing gains for the third successive year,
supports the normal and "logical policies under which agriculture
and industry are returning to full activity. Under these policies we
approach a balanci of the National Budget. National income
increases; tax receipts, based on that income, increase without the
levying of new taxes. That is why I am able to say to this, the
ond session of the Seventy-fourth Congress, that based on existing
laws it is my belief that no new taxes, over and above the present
taxes, are either advisable or necessary.
National income increases; employment increases. Therefore, we
can look forward to a reduction in the number of those citizens who
are in need. Therefore, also, we can anticipate a reduction in our
appropriations for relief.
In the light of our substantial material progress, in the light of
the increasing effectiveness of the restoration of popular rule, I
recommend to the Congress that we advance; and that we do not
retreat I have confidence—confidence that you will not fail the
people of the Nation whoso mandate you have already so faithfully
fulfilled.
I repeat, with the same faith and the same determination, my
words of March 4, 1933—" We face the arduous days that lie before
us in the warm courage of national unity; with a clear consciousness
of
king old and precious moral values; with a clean satisfaction
that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young
alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and pernmiient national
life. We do not distrust the future of essential democracy."
I cannot better end this Message on the state of the Union than by
repeating the words of a wise philosopher at whose feet I sat many
years ago:
What great crises teach all men whom the example and counsel ot the brave
inspire is this lesson : Kcnr not, view all the tusks of life as sacred, have faith
id the triumph of the Ideal, give dally all thnt you have to give, be loyal and
rejoice whenever you lind yourselves part of a great Ideal enterprise.. You
at this moment have the honor to belong to a generation whose lips are
touched by dre. You live in a land that now enjoys the hlexsings of peace. Dut
let nothing liuninn he wlmlly nlicn from ymi. The liuman race now pusses
through oue of Its great fiises. New Ideas, new issues—a new call for men
to carry on the work of righteousness, of charity, of courage, of patience, and
of loyalty • • •. However, memory brings back this moment to your minds,
let It be able to say to you: That was a great moment. I t was the beginning
of a new era. • • • This world In Its crisis called for volunteers, for men
of faith in life, of patience in service, of charity and of Insight. I responded
to the call however I could. I volunteered to give myself to my Master—
the cause of humane and brave living. I studied, I loved, I labored, unsparingly and hopefully, to be worthy of my generation.
V ^ L . FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 6,1937.
To the Congress of the United States:
For the first time in our national history a President delivers his
Annual Message to a new Congress within a fortnight of the expiration of his term of office. While there is no change in the Presidency this year, change will occur in future years. I t is my belief
that under this new constitutional practice the President should in
every 'fourth year, insofar as seems reasonable, review the existing
state of our national affairs and outline broad future problems, leaving specific recommendations for future legislation to be made by
the President about to be inaugurated.
At this time, however, circumstances of the moment compel me to
ask your immediate consideration of: First, measures extending the
life of certain authorizations and powers which, under present statutes^ expire within a few weeks; second, an addition to the existing
Neutrality Act to cover specific points raised by the unfortunate
civil strife in Spain; and, third, a deficiency appropriation bill for
which I shall submit estimates this week.
In March 1933 the problems which faced our nation, and which
only our national government had the resources to meet, were more
serious even than appeared on the surface.
I t was not only that the visible mechanism of economic life had
broken down. More disturbing was the fact that long neglect of
the needs of the underprivileged had brought too many of our people to the verge of doubt as to the successful adaptation of our
historic traditions to the complex modern world. I n that lay a
challenge to our democratic form of government itself.
Ours was the task to prove that democracy could be made to
function in the world of today as effectively as in the simpler world
of a hundred years ago. Ours was the task to do more than to argue
a theory. The times required the confident answer of performance
to those whose instinctive faith in ^humanity made them want to
believe that in the long run democracy would prove superior to more
extreme forms of government as a process of getting action when
action was wisdom, without the spiritual sacrifices which^those other
forms of government, exact.
That challenge we met.. To meet .it required unprecedented activities under Federal leadership—to end abuses—to restore a large
measure of material prosperity—to give new faith to millions of our
�2828
FRANKLIN
D.
ROOSEVELT
dtuens who had been tsaditionally taught to expect that democracy
would provide continuously wider opportunity and continuously
greater security in a world where science was continuously making
material riches more available to man.
In the many methods of attack with which we met these problems,
you and I , by mutual understanding and by determination to cooperate, helped to make democracy succeed by refusing to permit
unnecessary disagreement to arise between two of our branches of
government That spirit of cooperation was able to solve difficulties
of extraordinary magnitude and^ ramification with few important
errors, and at a cost cheap when measured by the immediate necessities and the eventual results.
I lodk forward to a continuance of tliat cooperation in the "next 4
years. I look forward also to a continuance of the basis of that
cooperation—mutual respect for each other's proper sphere of functioning in a democracy which is working well, and a common-sense
realization of the need for play in the joints of the machine.
On that basis, it is within the right of the Congress to determine
which of the many new activities shall be continued or abandoned,
increased or curtailed.
On that same basis, the President alone has the responsibility for
their administration. I find that this task of Executive management
has reached the point where our administrative machinery needs comprehensive overhauling. I shall, therefore, shortly address the
Congress more fully in > regard to modernizing and improving the
executive branch of the Government
That cooperation of the past 4 years between the Congress and the
President has aimed at the fulfillment of a twofold policy—first,
economic recovery through many kinds of assistance to agriculture,
industry, and banking; and, second, deliberate improvement in the
personal security and opportunity of the great mass of our people.
The recovery we sought was not to be merely temporary. It was
to be a recovery protected from the causes of previous disasters.
With that aim in view—to prevent a future similar crisis—you and
I joined in a series of enactments—safe banking and sound currency,
the guarantee of bank deposits, protection for the investor in securities, the removal of the threat of agricultural surpluses, insistence on
collective bargaining, the outlawing of sweatshops, child labor and
unfair trade practices, and the beginnings of security for the aged
and the worker.
Nor was the recovery we sought merely a purposeless whirring of
machinery. It is important, of course, that every man and woman
in the country be able tofindwork, that every factory nm, that business as a whole eam profits. But government in a democratic nation
does not exist solely, or ever primarily, for that purpose.
Fourth Annual Message
2829
It is not enough that the wheels turn. They must carry us in the
direction of a greater satisfaction in life for the average man. The
deeper purpose of democratic government is to assist as many of its
citizens as possible—especially those who need it most—to improve
their conditions of life, to retain all personal liberty' which does not
adversely affect their neighbors, and to pursue the happiness which
comes with security and an opportunity for recreation and culture.
Even with our present recovery we are far from the goal of that
deeper purpose. There are far-reaching problems still with us for
which democracy must find solutions if it is to consider i
i
successful.
For example, many millions of Americans still live in habitations
which not only fail to provide the physical benefits of modem civilization but breed disease and impair the health of future generations.
The menace exists not only in the slum areas of the very large cit: ,
but in many smaller cities as well. It exists on tens of thousands
of farms, in varying degrees, in every part of the country.
Another example is the prevalence of an un-American type of
tenant farming. I do not suggest that every farm family has the
capacity to eam a satisfactory living on its own farm. But many
thousands of tenant farmers—indeed most of them—with some financial assistance and with some advice and training, can be made selfsupporting on land which can eventually belong to them. The nation would be wise to offer them that chance instead of permitting
them to go along as they do now, year after year, with neither future
security as tenants nor hope of ownership of their homes nor expectation of bettering the lot of their children.
Another national problem is the intelligent developnjent of our
social security system, the broadening of the services it renders, and
practical improvement in its operation. In many nations where such
laws are in effect success in meeting the expectations of the community has come through frequent amendment of the original
statute.
And, of course, the most far-reaching and the most inclusive problem of all is that of unemployment and the lack of economic balance,
of which unemployment is at once the result and the symptom. The
immediate question of adequate relief for the needy unemployed who
are capable of performing useful work I shall discuss with the Congress during the coming months. The broader task of preventing
unemployment is a matter of long-range evolutionary policy. To
thafr we must continue to give our best thought and effort. We cannot assume that immediate industrial and commercial activity which
mitigates present pressures justifies the national government at this
time in placing the unemployment problem in a filing cabinet of
finished business.
�2830
FRANKLIN
D. R O O S E V E L T
Fhictuations in employment are tied to all other wasteful fluctuations in our mechanism of production and distribution. One of
these wastes is speculation. In securities or commodities, the larger
the volume of speculation the wider become the upward and downward swings, and the more certain the result that in the long run
there will be more losses than gains in the underlying wealth of the
community.
"
"^And, as is now well known to all of us, the same net loss to society
'comes from reckless overproduction and monopolistic underproduction b i natural and manufactured commodities.
Overproduction, underproduction, and speculation are three evil
sisters who distill the troubles of unsound inflation and disastrous
deflation. I t is to the interest of the Nation to have government help
private enterprise to gain sound general price levels and to protect
those levels from wide perilous fluctuations. We know now that i f
early in 1931 government had taken the steps which were taken 2 and
3 years later the depression would never have reached the depths of
the beginning of 1933.
i
Sober second thought.'confirms most of us in the belief that the
- broad objectives 6f the: National Recovery 1 Act were sound. We
know now that its^difeiUti^arose'fromjthe-fact that it tried to do
too^ much. ;iFor eiample^it|wM imwi8e'to expect the same agency
to regulate the length of .working hours, minimum wages, child labor,
and collective bargaining on the one hand and the complicated questions of unfair trade practices and business controls on the other.
The statute of N. R. A. has been outlawed. The problems have not.
They are still with us.
That decent conditions and adequate pay for labor and just return
for agriculture can be secured through parallel and simultaneous
action by 48 States is a proven impossibility. I t is equally impossible
to obtain curbs on monopoly, unfair trade practices, and speculation
by State action alone. There are those who, sincerely or insincerely,
still cling to State action as a theoretical hope. But experience with
actualities makes it clear that Federal laws supplementing State laws
are needed to help solve the problems which result from modern
invention applied in an industrialized nation which conducts its
business with scant regard to State lines.
During the past year there has been a growing belief that there
is little fault to be found with the Constitution of the United States
as it stands today. The vital need is not an alteration of our fundamental law but an increasingly enlightened view with reference to it.
Difficulties have grown out of its interpretation; but rightly considered, it can l)e used as an instrument of progress and not as a device
for prevention of action.
Fourth Annual Message
2831
I t is worth our while to read and re-read the preamble of the Constitution and Article I thereof which confers the legislative powers
upon the Congress of the United States. I t is also worth our while
to read again the debates in the Constitutional Convention of one
hundred and fifty years ago. From such reading, I obtain the very
definite thought that the members of that Convention were fully
aware that civilization would raise problems for the proposed new
Federal Government, which they themselves could not even surmise;
and that it was their definite intent and expectation that a liberal
interpretation in the years to come would give to the Congress the
same relative powers over new national problems as they themselves
gave to the Congress over the national problems of their day.
In presenting to the Convention the first basic draft of the Constitution, Edmund Randolph explained that i t was the purpose "to
insert essential principles only, lest the operation of government
should be clogged by rendering those, provisions permanent and
unalterable which ought to be accommodated to times and events."
With a better understanding of our purposes, and a more intelligent recognition of our needs as a nation, it is not to be assumed
that there will be prolonged failure to bring legislative and judicial
action into closer harmony. Means must be found to adapt our
legal forms and our judicial interpretation to the actual present
national needs of the largest progressive democracy in the modem
world.
That thought leads to a consideration of world problems. To go
no further back than the l>eginning of Jhis century, men and women
everywhere were seeking conditions of life very different from those
which were, customary before modern invention and modern industry
and modern communications had come into being. The World War,
tor all of its tragedy, encouraged these demands and stimulated
action to fulfill these new desires.
Many national governments seemed unable adequately to respond;
and, often with the improvident assent of the masses of the people
themselves, new forms of government were set up with oligarchy
taking the place of democracy. In oligarchies, militarism has leapt
forward, while in those nations which have retained democracy,
militarism has waned.
I have recently visited three of our sister republics in South America. The very cordial receptions with which I was greeted were in
tribute to democracy. To me the outstanding observation of that
visit was that the masses of the peoples of all tlie Americas are convinced that the democratic form of government can 1* made to succeed and do not wish to substitute for it any other form of government. They believe that democracies are l>est able to coj* with tho
�2832
FRANKLIN
D. ROOSEVELT
changing problems of modern civilization within themselves, and that
democracies are best able to maintain peace among themselves.
The Inter-American Conference, operating on these fundamental
principles of democracy, did much to assure peace in this hemisphere.
Existing peace machinery was improved. New instruments to maintain peace and eliminate causes of war were adopted. Wider protection of the interests of the American republics in the event of war outside the Western Hemisphere was provided. Respect for, and observance of, international treaties and international law were strengthened.
Principles of liberal trade policies, as effective aids to the maintenance of peace weire reaffirmed. The intellectual and cultural relationships among American republics were broadened as a part of the
general peace program.
In a world unhappily thinking in terms of war, the representatives
of 21 nations sat around a viable, in an atmosphere of complete confidence and understanding, sincerely discussing measures for maintaining peace. Here was a great and a permanent achievement
directly affecting the lives and security of the 250,000,000 human
beings who dwell in this Western, Hemisphere. Here was an example which must have ..a wholesome effect upon the rest of the
world.
• -u-'^JsC
I n a very real sense, the conference in Buenos Aires sent forth a
message on behalf of all the democracies of the world to those nations
which live otherwise. Because such other governments are perhaps
more spectacular, it was high time for democracy to assert itself.
Because all of us believe that our democratic form of government
can cope adequately with modem problems as they arise, it is patriotic as well as logical for us to prove that we can meet new national
needs with new laws consistent with an historic constitutional framework clearly intended to receive liberal and not narrow interpretation.
The United States of America, within itself, must continue the
task of making democracy succeed.
I n that task the legislative branch of our Government will, I am
confident, continue to meet the demands of democracy whether they
relate to the curbing of abuses, the extension of help to thos;? who
need help, or the better balancing of our interdependent economies.
So, too, the executive branch of the Government must move for
ward in this task, and, at the same time, provide better management
for administrative action of all kinds.
The judicial branch also is asked by the people to do its part in
making democracy successful. We do not ask the courts to call
nonexistent powers into being, but we have a right to expect that
conceded powers or those legitimately implied shall be made effective
instruments for the common good.
2833
Fifth Annual Message
The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the denial
of essential powers of free government.
Your task and mine is not ending with the end of the depression.
The people of the United States have made it clear that they expect
us to continue our active efforts in behalf of their peaceful
advancement.
In that spirit of endeavor and service I greet the Seventy-fifth
Congress at the beginning of this auspicious new year.
FIFTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.
THE WHITE
HOUSE,
January 3,1938.
Mr. PRESIDENT, Mr. SPEAKER, MEMBERS OF THE SENATE AND OF THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:
In addressing the Congress on the state of the Union present facts
and future hazards demand that I speak clearly and earnestly of the
causes which underlie events of profound concern to all.
In spite of the determination 01 this Nation for peace, it has become
clear that acts and policies of nations in other parts of the world
have far-reaching effects, not only upon their immediate neighbors
but also on us.
I am thankful that I can tell you that our Nation is at peace. I t
has been kept at peace despite provocations which in other days,
because of their seriousness, could well have engendered war. The
people of the United States and the Government of the United States
nave shown Rapacity for restraint and a civilized approach to the
purposes of peace, while at the same time we maintain tha integrity
inherent in the sovereignty of 130,000,000 people, lest we weaken or
destroy our influence for peace and jeopardize the sovereignty itself.
I t is our traditional policy to live at peace with other nations.
More than that, we have been among the leaders in advocating the
use of pacific methods of discussion and conciliation in international
differences. We have striven for the reduction of military forces.
But in a world of high tension and disorder, in a world where
stable civilization is actually threatened, it becomes the responsibility
of each nation which strives for peace at home and peace with and
among others to be strong enough to assure the observance of those
fundamentals of peaceful solution of conflicts which are the only
ultimate basis for orderly existence.
Resolute in our determination to respect the rights of others and
to command respect for the rights of ourselves, we must keep ourselves adequately strong in self-defense.
There is a trend in the world away from the observance both of the
letter and the spirit of treaties. We propose to observe, as we have
in the past, our own treaty obligations; but we cannot be certain of
reciprocity on the part of others.
�The American flag was used in the summer of 1897
for wrapping a seventy-eight-pound prize watermelon,,
two and one-half feet long and six feet in circumference
sent from Georgia as a gift to the President.
These were popular White House party desserts:'.^
U
V
V' ' :" ' TUTTI FRUTTI y ^ t ^ - S S ^
.
Line the interior of a three-part lemon-shapedj
mold with one pint of vanilla ice cream, cut four]
ounces of candied apricots into small pieces, also fourj
ounces of candied cherries into halves.' Mix these well^
together. Spread half the quantity pf fruit bver thie
cream in the mold and pour in one pint of raspberry^
water ice. Sprinkle the balance of the fruits on the'
water ice and fill tiie mold vvith one p ^
cream ice. Cover the mold tightly, place in freezer.
Line a dome-shaped mold with ladyfihgers^;J
rarinhg
thick cream.. Add eradua;lly four ounces of powdered
into the mold and set in . freezer for an hour: or two..
TAn.^ . . . . . . — J . . .
*—ts;of mold onto
|;
V^-
President McKinley inaugurated the practice of
having the Marine Bugler announce the arrival of the
President, rather than playing "Hail to the Chief"
as had been done previously and is done today.
At their first state dinner, the McKinleys had sixtytwo guests and placed the table in the long corridor
with the Marine Band playing in the conservatory. As
had been the practice for some years, each lady received a bouquet of roses at the table, and each gentleman a boutonniere of lilies-of-the-valley.
\
�McKinley hired a plain cook for his family meals
but for state dinners he hired a French chef from New
York. Dinners seldom had more than twelve courses
and often: were limited to eight. However, the service
was leisurely and the dinners sometimes lasted for two
hours. Eventually the President and his wife arose and
the ladies passed to the reception rooms and the men to
the smoking room where coffee was served. (When dinner
was served in the corridor, the State Dining Room was
used as the smoking room.) After a brief period of informal conversation, the men joined the ladies in the reception rooms where tea was served.
The custom then, as now, was that no guests left
until those of highest rank had taken their leave. Out
bf consideration to others, these officials left immediately
after tea had been served. By eleven o'clock, all the
not eat the food that was prepared for the dinners, but
ate a few crackers from a plate plaped at her side.
At McKinley's receptions, a second military band
often alterriated with the Marine Band in providing
music, and no refreshments were served, not even at the
invitational affairs. One exception, was the reception
for the Episcopal convention to which some two thousand were invited.
After receptions, however, the receiving parties
which included members of the cabinet, high officials in
government and persons invited to stand behind the
line or with the President and First Lady in the receiving line were entertained at a supper in one of the upstairs rooms.
President McKinley. enjoyed all entertaining but
especially the public receptions, and said he got more
from the friendly callers than they got from him, for
they always had a smile and a cheerful word. Three
times a week he held noon receptions for the public
when he stood near the door and shook hands with
the visitors. I f Ida felt well enough, she sat at his
side.
December 12, 1900 was "centennial d a y ' ^ j n
Washington, and the President held aTmorning reception for governors of the states and territories at which
a model and drawings for an enlarged White House
Mrs. William
McKinley
147
�*
V -
4
•
*
^* • *
.I
were displayed. Then the doors were opened to the
public and McKinley set a record for handshaking.
He clasped four thousand eight hundred and sixteen
palms in less than two hours, an average of forty-six
V per minute.
The McKinleys gave many small dinners, alter
which he read or sat in a rocker on the South portico
looking out over the Washington Monument. Mrs.
McKinley whiled away her invalid hours crocheting or
knitting. She made three thousand five hundred pairs
! of slippers that she gave to church bazaars during her
1 years in the White House.
.
, Because of their open friendliness, the McKinleys
, ,.,. „ p;,p v, ..d br v - r •Tjr-oW.tior ?n 1900. Ho^rver.
v
i
r
r
?T
:
.";:-.;-^. .r.'iri: ' Of' t r .
following year while in Buffalo attending the PanAmerican Exposition, he was shot at a public reception
and died eight days later.
It was an age of tranquillity and prosperity; a
time to evoke nostalgia. But with McKinley s administration, the United States entered the twentieth
century and was coming of age as a world power.
A Saturday
afternoon Marine
Band Concert on
the South Lawn.
148
�Tie d m ^ f f ^
Industry Comes of Age,
1865-1900
That is the most perfect government in which an injury to one is the
concern of all.
Motto of The Knights of Labor
Prologue: A few of the railroad companies after 1865 had more employees than a
number of the state governments—and more power to inflia harm. When cutthroat
competition failed to eliminate abuses, Congress finally passed the precedentshattering Interstate Commerce Act'of 1887. But this pioneer measure fell far short of
providing adequate safeguards. Competing industries had^ meanwhile been merging
as monopolistic trusts, notably Rockefeller's Standard Qil" Company. Congress belatedly tried to restrain these monsters with the rather toothless Sherman Anti-Trust
Art of 1890. The emerging "Titans of Industry"—notably Andrew Carnegie—also
developed an articulate social and economic philosophy to justify the new social order
they were helping to create. The new industrial regime transformed the lives of
working Americans, and stimulated the trade-union movement The Knights of Labor,
who in the 1870s and 1880s made the most successful attempt until then to organize
the nation's army of toilers, amassed considerable numerical strength. But they overreached themselves in the 1880s, and the wage-conscious American Federadon of
Labor, with its component skilled unions, forged to the front.
A. The Problem of the Railroads.
I. A Defense of Long-Haul Rates (1885)
A serious grievance against the "railroad rascals" was discrimination. Their rates
would often be lower where a line had competition, and higher elsewhere. Charges
were sometimes heavier for a short haul than for a long haul over the same track. At
one time the freight rate on cotton goods shippedfrom Boston to Denver was Si. 79 a >
hundredweight; if the shipment wentfourteen hundred milesfurther, to San Francisco,
the total charge was only Si SO. Is the following justification of this practice by a
southern railroad manager (H. S. Haines) convincing? Why did certain farmersfavor
this type of discrimination? .
1
Report of the Senate Select Committee oh Interstate Commerce, 49th Cong., 1st sess., Senate Reports, no. .
46, vol. 2, pan 1, Appendix, pp. 130-131.
�^.Mtsta ^
industry Comes of Age, 1865-1900
tage of different carrying lines, as well as bf water transportation in the sumi
Taking advantage of those facilities, it made the best bargains possible for its freijOther companies sought to do the same.
The Standard gave advantages to the railroads for the purpose of reducing
cost of transportation of freight. It offeredfreightsin large quantity, Carloads ;
trainloads. It furnished loading facilities and discharging facilities at great cost
provided regular traffic, so that a railroad could conduct its transportation to the b
advantage and use its equipment to the full extent of its hauling capacity withi
waiting for the refiner's convenience. It exempted railroads from liability forfirea
carried its own insurance. It provided at its own expense terminal facilities whi
permitted economies in handling. For these services it obtained contracts for spec
allowances ohfreights.But notwithstanding these special allowances, this traffic fro
the Standard Oil Company was far more profitable to the railroad companies than tl
smaller and irregular traffic, which might have paid a higher rate.
To understand the situation which affected the giving and taking of rebates,
must be remembered that the railroads were all eager to enlarge their freight traffi
They were competing with the facilities and rates offered by the boats on lake an
canal and by the pipe lines. All these means of transporting oil cut into the business c
the railroads, and they were desperately anxious to successfully meet this competi
tion. . . .
The profits of the Standard Oil Company did not come from advantages given b\
railroads. The railroads, rather, were the ones who profited by the traffic of the
Standard Oil Company, and whatever advantage it received in its constant efforts to
reduce rates of rates offreightwas only one of the many elements of lessening cost to
the consumer which enabled us to increase our volume of business the world over
because we could reduce the selling price.
How general was the complicated bargaining for rates Can hardly be imagined;
everyone got the best rate that he could. After the passage of the Interstate Commerce
Aa, it was learned that many small companies which shipped limited quantities had
received lower rates than we had been able to secure, notwithstanding the fact that we
had made large investments to provide for terminal facilities, regular shipments, and
other economies.
I well remember a bright man from Boston who had much to say about rebates
and drawbacks. He was an old and experienced merchant, and looked after his affairs
with a cautious and watchful eye. He feared that some of his competitors were doing
better than he in bargaining for rates, and he delivered himself of this conviction:
"I arri opposed on principle to the whole system of rebates and drawbacks—
unless I am in it."
v
2. An 0/7 Man Goes Bankrupt (1899)
Rockefeller's great passion was not so much a love of power or money as a dislike
of waste and inefficiency. Having begun as a $3.50-a-week employee, he ultimately
moved into the chaotically competitive oil business with a vision that enabled him to
see far ahead, and then "abound the comer." Overlooking no detail, he insisted that
2
Report of tbe US. Industrial Commission, vol. I (Washington, D.C: Government Prinung Office, 1899), pp.
687,704. •
�B. The Trusts and Monopoly
63
every drop of solder used on his oil cans be counted. By acquiring or controlling
tvarehouses, pipelines, tankers, railroads, oilfields, and refineries, he helpedforge the
United States first great tmst in 1882. He produced a superior product at a lowered
price bid, in line with existing ethics, resorted to such "refined robbery" as ruthless
price cutting dictation to dealers, deception, espionage, and rebates. George Rice, one
of his ill-starred competitors, here complains to the U.S. Industrial Commission. What
are his principal grievances?
I am a citizen of the United States, bom in the state of Vermont. Producer of
petroleum for more than thirty years, and a refiner of same for twenty years. But my
refinery has been shut down during the past three years, owing to the powerful and
all-prevailing machinations of the Standard Oil Trust, in criminal collusion and conspiracy with the railroads to destroy my business of twenty years of patient industry, toil,
and money in building up, wholly by and through unlawful freight discriminations.
I have been driven from pillar to post,fromone railway line to another, for twenty
years, in the absolutely vain endeavor to get equal and just freight rates with the
Standard Oil Trust, so as to be able to run my refinery at anything approaching a profit,
but which I have been utterly unable to do. I have had to consequendy shut down^
with my business absolutely ruined and my refinery idle.
This has been ayery sad, bitter, and ruinous experience for me to endure, but I
have endeavored to the best of my circumstances and ability to combat it the utmost I
could for many a long waiting year, expecting relief through the honest and proper
execution of our laws, which have [has] as yet, however, never come. But I am still
living in hopes, though I may die in despair. . . .
Outside of rebates or freight discriminations, I had no show with the Standard Oil
Trust, because of their unlawfully acquired monopoly, by which they could temporarily cut only my customers' prices, and below cost, leaving the balance of the town,
nine-tenths, uncut. This they can easily do without any appreciable harm to their
general trade, and thus effectually wipe out all compedtion, as fiilly set forth. Standard
Oil prices generally were so high that I could sell my goods 2 tb 3 cents a gallon below
their prices and make a nice profit, but these savage attacks and [price] cuts upon my
customers' goods . . . plainly showed '... their poTyer for evil, and the uselessness to
contend against such odds. : . .
3. Weaver Attacks the Trusts //892)
Rockefeller's Standard Oil of Ohio was not authorized to operate outside the state,
so in 1882 Ae Standard Oil Trust, the first of its kind, was bom. "A corporation of
corporations," it secretly mergedforty-one different concerns. In 1892 the courts held
this trust to be illegally in restraint of trade, but Rockefeller and his associates were
able to achieve their semimonopolistic ends by less formal agreements. General
Weaver, the fiery Populist candidate for president in 1892 (see later, p. 125), here
assails the trusts, whose unwritten motto was said tobe "Let us prey. "Note his enumeration of Ae evils of the trusts. What does he make of the monopolists', claim that the
elimination of wastefid competition is advantageous to the consumer?
3
J. B. Weaver, A Call to Action (Des Moines: Iowa PrinUng Company, 1892), pp. 392-393-
�66
Chapter 25 Industry Comes 'of Age, 1865-1900
money which its thoughtless donor will ever be able to give in true charity will d-j
good. He only gradfied his own feelings, saved himself from annoyance—and this was
probably one bf the most selfish and very worst actions of his life, for in all respects hits most worthy.
In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will
help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to.improvt
may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise; to assist
but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by
almsgiving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assis
tance. The really valuable men of the race never do, except in cases of accident or
sudden change. Evetyone has, of course, cases of individuals brought to his own
knowledge where temporary assistance can do genuine good, and these he will not
overlook.
But the amount which can be wisely given by the individual for individuals is
necessarily limited by his lack of knowledge of the circumstances conneaed with
each. He is the only true reformer who is as careful and as anxious not to aid the
unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even more so, for in almsgiving
more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue.
The rich man is thus almostjestricted to following the examples of Peter Cooper.
"Enoch Pratt of Baltimore, Mr. Pratt of Brooklyn, Senator Stanford,* and others, who
know that the best mekns of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the
ladders uppn which the aspiring can rise—parks, and means of recreation, by which
men are helped in body and mind; works of an, certain to give pleasure and improve
the public taste; and public institutions of various kinds, which will improve the
general condition of the people;—in this manner returning their surplus wealth to the
mass pf'their fellows in the forms best calculated to do them lasting good. . . .
The man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was his
to administer during life,' will pass away "unwept, unhonored, and unsung," no matter
to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the
public verdia will then be: "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."
Such, in my opinion, is the true Gospel concerning Wealth, obedience to which is
destined some day to solve the problem of the Rich and the Poor, and to bring "Peace
on earth, among men good will."
2. The Nation Cho/lenges Carneg/e (/ 90 /)
Carnegie avoided the "disgrace" of dying rich. He gave away $350 million of tbe
fortune he had accumulated. Some $60 million went to public municipal libraries,
many named after himself. Finley Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley") poked fun at this
immodest arrangement, especially the feature that required the community to provide
the site, the books, the upkeep: "Ivry time he [Carnegie] dhrops a dollar, it makes a
noise like a waither fwaiter] fallin' downstairs with a tray iv dishes." The New York
Nation reviewed rather critically Carnegie's essay on the gospel of wealth when it was
•Cooper founded an institute in New York City for educating the working classes; Enoch Pratt established a
free library In Baltimore; Charles Pratt created an institute in Brooklyn for training skilled workers; and
Leland Stanford endowed Stanford University.
7he Nation (New York) 62 (January 17, 1901): 55.
2
�67
C. The New Philosophy of Materialism
published in book form. Does Carnegie or The Nation have tbe better of the argument
as to the baleful effects of inherited riches? How have these issues changed since
Carnegie's day?
Mr. Carnegie's philosophy is perfectly simple, and it is stated clearly and forcibly.
He holds, first, that the present competitive system, which necessarily creates millionaires, or allows men to get rich, is essential to progress, and should not be altered.
Secondly, rich men should not leave their fortunes to their children, because their
children will be demoralized by having money to spend which they have not earned.
Thirdly, rich men should not indulge in luxury. Fourthly, they should dispose of their
fortunes while living, or the government should confiscate them at their death. Fifthly,
the only practical way of disposing of them is to found libraries and other public
institutions, requiring the public to contribute to their support.
Evidendy, this system assumes that millionaires are sinners above other men. The
number of persons who have wealth sufficient to maintain their children in idleness is
very large, and such persons are able to indulge in many luxuries. We cannot concede
that the children of millionaires will go straight to perdition if they inherit their
parents' wealth, while those who get but a hundred thousand shall be immune.
Everyone familiar with the life of the common people knows that an inheritance of a
very few thousand dollars may demoralize a young man, artd this principle has been
illustrated on a prodigious scale in our pension largesses. On the other hand, virtue among the children of millionaires is not quite so rare
as Mr. Carnegie intimates. Instances are known where inherited wealth has been
wisely administered by men of respectable and even irreproachable habits. Mr. Carnegie's dictum, "I would as soon leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar," is too
sweeping. Millions of people who are not millionaires desire to give their children the
advantages of wealth, and this desire is one Of the greatest incentives to accumulation.
Provided they educate their children wisely, it is impossible to maintain that the gift of
these advantages is necessarily injurious.
On this point Mr. Carnegie and Mr; Gladstone [a British statesman] had some
debate; the latter contending that "the hereditary transmission of wealth and posidon,
in conjunction with the calls of occupation and of responsibility, is a good and not an
evil thing." Of course, this is nothing but the old conflict between the ideals of
democracy and aristocracy, and we need not restate it . . .
Probably we shall see the experiment of confiscating large fortunes at the death of
their owners tried on an increasing scale, together with progressive taxes on incomes.
3. Conweli Deifies the Dollar (c.1900)
The Reverend Russell H. Conweli was a remarkable Baptist preacher of Philadelphia who founded Temple University and had a large hand in establishing three
hospitals. He delivered his famous lecture, Acres of Diamonds, more than six
thousand times. The proceeds went toward the education ofsome ten thousand young
men. His basic theme was that in seeking riches people were apt to overlook the
opportunities (the "acres of diamonds") in their own backyards. Critics charged that
'R. H. Conweli, Acres of Diamonds (1901), pp. 145-147,151. Reprinted imm Modem Eloquence.
V
�30
Amenca on the World Stage,
1899-1909
The mission ofthe United States is one of benevolent assimilation.
President McKinley, 1898
Prologue: The resentful Filipinos, unwilling to be caged by American overlords,
revolted in 1899. The insurrection dragged on scandalously for seven years. In 1900
the Democratic presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan, trumpeting antiimperialism as the "paramount issue," again ran unsuccessfully against the prosperity
president, William McKinley. The victor was fatally shot late in 1901 after serving only
six months of his second term. Theodore Roosevelt, moving up from the vicepresidency, promptly launched a two-fisted, big-stick foreign policy. By strong-arm
methods, he secured a canal zone at Panama, and the;n "made the dirt fly." By devising
the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doarine, he intervened in the bankrupt
Dominican Republic to prevent other powers from intervening. By mediating a setdement at the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
And by interceding in the quarrel between California andjapaih over Japanese immigrants, he worked out the "Gendemen's Agreement" for amicably halting the inflow.
A. The 6/tter Fruits of Imperialism.
I. Beveridge Deplores Unpatriotic Talk (1900)
The Filipino troops, under their leader Emilio Aguinaldo, had cooperated loyally
with the Americans in capturing Manila. They had received informal promises of
freedom, but when these were not honored, they rose in revolt. The fighting between
Filipinos and Americans rapidly degenerated into brutal guerrilla warfare. Albert J.
Beveridge of Indiana (see p. 160), recently elected to the US. Senate, went to the
Philippines on a personal tour of inspection and reported hisfindings in an impressive
Senate speech. Should the anti-imperialists have been silenced by his argument?
It has been charged that our condua of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has
been the reverse. I have been in our hospitals and seen the Filipino wounded as
carefully, tenderly cared for as our own. Within our lines they may plow and sow and
1
Congressional Record, 56th Cong., 1st sess., (Jznmry 9,1900), p. 70&
163
�164
Chapter 30 America on the World Stage, 1899-1909
reap and go about the affairs of peace with absolute liberty. And yet all this kindno.
was misunderstood, or rather not understood. Senators must remember that we arv
not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals. We ar,
dealing with Orientals who are Malays. We are dealing with Malays instructed i.
Spanish methods. They mistake kindness for weakness, forbearance for fear. .
Mr. President, reluctantly and only from ia sense of duty am I forced to say tlu
American opposition to the war has been the chief factor in prolonging it. ] i ;
Aguinaldo not understood that in America, even in the American Congress, evu
here in the Senate, he and his cause were supponed; had he had not known that it \\>
proclaimed on the stump and ih the press of afactionin the United States that ever,
shot his misguided followers fired into the breasts of American soldiers was like tlu
volleys fired by Washington's men against the soldiers of King George, his insurra
don would have dissolved before it entirely crystallized.
The utterances of American opponents of the war are read to the ignorant sol
diers of Aguinaldo, and repeated in exaggerated form among the common peopk
Attempts have been made by wretches claiming American citizenship to ship arrm
and ammunition from Asiatic ports to Filipinos, and these acts of infamy were coupled
by the Malays with American assaults on our government at home.
The Filipinos do not understand free speech, and therefore our tolerance of
American assaults on the American President and the American government meair.
to them that our President is in the minority or he would not permit what appears to
them such treasonable criticism. It is believed and stated in [the islands of] Luzon
Panay, and Cebu that the Filipinos have only to fight, harass, retreat, break up iniu
small parties, if necessary, as they are doing now, but by any means hold out until tin
next presidential eleoion, and our forces will be withdrawn.
All this has aided the enemy more than climate, arms, and battle. Senators, I have
heard these reports myself; I have talked with the people; I have seen our mangled
boys in the hospital and field; I have.stood on the firing line and beheld our dead
soldiers, their faces turned to the pitiless southern sky, and in sorrow rather than
anger I say to those whose voices in America have cheered those misguided native>
on to shoot our soldiers down, that the blood of those dead and wounded boys ol
ours is on their hands, and the flood of all the years can never wash that stain away. In
sorrow rather than anger I say these words, for I earnesdy believe that our brotherknew not what they did.
at
2. Bryan Vents His B/tterness (/90/)
tn 1900 the Republican President McKinley, who favored keeping the Philippine.^
again ran against the Democrat William J. Bryan, who favored giving them indepen
dence. Republicans accused Byran ofprolonging the insurrection by holding outfalsi'
hopes. One popular magazine published a picture of the Filipino leader on its from
cover, with the query, "Who is behind Aguinaldo?" The curious reader lifted a flap
and saw the hawklike features of Bryan. McKinley triumphed by a handsome margin
and Republicans misleadingty hailed the results as a national mandate to retain the
islands. The next year Bryan expressed his bitterness as follows, several months afw
2
Tbe Commoner, November 22, 1901.
�Al'
January, 1911
V
THE PRESIDENT'S NEW YEAR RECEPTIONS,-THEN
AND NOW
;
B Y H E L E N HABCOUET
HAT the President of the young United States
should do, and .how he should do it, were pressing
questions at the organization of our Government.
Even the habitual calm of the peerless Washington,
the first President, was troubled to know how he. should con- duct himself in accordance with the dignity of his office and the
simplicity pf a democratic republic. Says the historian, McMar-
r
tin:— •
—• .
• '• ;
•
" While the House was busy determining by what name the
President should be cdied, Washington was troubled to know
in what manner he should behave.'' He held anxious consultations
with Hamilton and Adams on the subject, and it wasfinallydetermined that the President ..should hold two receptions each \
week, and give a weekly dinner to the members of Congress. ~ /
, Times have altered since those days when Washington.'could
have entertained all of the Senators and Representatives at
three State dinners of thirty covers each. It would-now require
fifteen dinners of the same^number of covers to entertain the
Congress. Therefore these special State dinners have been
abandoned, as also the early weekly receptions, until now the
great New Year's reception is the one fixed social event of the ^
White House. There are many others, of course, but the time of
their coming and going is optional.
^
But between the then and the now there is a vast difference; a
difference as great as that between the weakness and poverty
of the nation in those days of its infancy, and that of its present
adult wealth and power.
.•
-
(i)
•• • ; . : .
.
�THE PRESIDENT'S NEW YEAR RECEPTIONS
An extract from "William Maclay's Diary," gives ns an
amusing glimpse of t h i t f r t l ^ ^
dent ^pteljin^
the seat of government.
Thus runs the Diary.
"Philadelphia, Jan. first, 1791. Just as I passed the President's House, Griffin hailed me and asked whether I would not
pay my respects to the President I was in haste and had on my
worst clothes; I could not prevail on myself to go with him. I
had, however, passed him but a little Way, when Osgood, Postv jr master-general, attacked me warmly to go with him. I was
I pushed forward by him, bolted into his presence; made the Presi| dent .the compliments of the season, had a hearty shake by the
r~hand. I was asked to partake of the punch and cake, but de? clined. I sat dbwn, and we had some chat, but the diplomatic
1
gentry and the foreigners coming in, I embraced thefirstvacancy-to make.my bow and wish him good moming."
^
s
atf^effirMSfe^
one
hundred and eight years ago. The "President's House," lasjjt
was named in Jhe appropriations by the Congress for the .first
fifty years, was not the White Hdufie-of today, forthe former
was burned by the British in 1814. Neither was its first New
Year reception like unto the brilliant affair of the present.
Like all pretentious Virginia mansions in the colonial times,
the President's House was built facing a river, in this instance,
the Potomac, with the grounds sloping from the house to the
water's edge. A broad drive swept around the house to the
front entrance overlooking the river to the south.
When President Adams entered into possession of the official
residence of the nation's Chief Executive, the mansion stood on
a ridge called " F . Street Bidge," and in the midst of a space used
chiefly fbr brick yards. The rains and melting snows rati down
from the ridge, part to the south, part to the north, the result
being the formation of an embryo creek that partially surrounded
the grounds of the mansion, and necessitated an -entrance by
.means of a wooden bridge which • spanned the area now occupied
by the north portico. A rough post and rail fence marked the
northern boundary of~the grounds^
�THE PRESIDENT'S NEW YEAR RECEPTIONS
3.
Conditions within were but little more encouraging than those
without. Not a single apartment was entirelyfinished.Writes
Mrs. Adams to her daughter:
"The great unfinished audience room I make a drying room
of to hang up the clothes in. The principal stairways are not up,
and will not be this winter. Six chambers are made comfortable;
two are occupied by the President and Mr. Shaw; two lower
rooms, one for a common parlor, and one for a levee room. Upstairs is the oval room, which is designed for the drawing-room,
and has crimson furniture in it. It is a very handsome room now,
and when completed will be beautiful. . . . I have no looking-glasses but dwarfs for this house, nor a twentieth part lamps
enough to light it.
"Surrounded with forests, can you believe that wood is not to
be had because people can't be found to cut arid cart itf . . .
No woodcutters, no carts to be had at any rate. We are now
indebted to a Pennsylvania wagon to bring us, through the first
clerk of the Treasury, one cord and a half of wood, which is all
we have for this house, where twelve fires are constantly required. This is the situation of almost every person. The public
officers have sent to Philadelphia for woodcutters andj^agoris.,"
Such, in fact, was the chaotic condition of things within and
without the President's House, that it looked for a time as though
the festival that had already become the custom on thefirstday
of the New Year would, of necessity, be lacking in the President 's
House on the first day of January, 1801.
But Mrs. Adams was an energetic woman, and a resourceful.
She felt that it would be a stigma- upon^the patriotism of the President and well nigh- sacrilege to disregard the custom which President and Mrs. Washington had instituted at theirfirstofficial
residence in the midst of worries; and discomforts almost equal
to her own, and so she resolved tofindsome way out of her difficultiesi
-.-'' v. '; • •.:. .
The great East room, or. audience chamber, was in such an
unfinished (Mjndition as to be impossible for use,: and Mrs. Adams
therefore converted one of the sleeping apartments on the second
floor into a temporary drawing-room; This was, in fact, the only
—
;
:
:
�4
THE PRESIDENT'S NEW YEAR RECEPTIONS
room in the "great castle'' that was nearly enoughfinishedto be
presentable to the public.
. In those comparatively primitive days much of the furniture
of the Executive Mansion had to be supplied by the President
himself, including the china used at the State dinners. In this
instance much of Mrs. Adams' best china had been broken in
transit from Philadelphia. She met this emergency by purchasing alLthaLsheLCpuldfindof suitable quality, and borrowing the
remainder from the wives of the Government officials. In the
matter of refreshments she met with less trouble, and the supply""both of solids and liquids was liberal both in variety and quantity. ..•
^ .
That this first Presidential reception in the Capital City was
I very unlike those of today, needs not to be told, but simple and
unostentatious as it certainly was to the New Year's reception
given a few years later by President Jackson, must be awarded
the palm for-the serving of tiie oddest refreshments ever offered
by the Chief Magistrate of a great nation to his guests. His
views as to consistent democracy were very decided, and therefore he insisted on serving, his reception guests with—crackers
and cheese!
As already noted, the President's House was built with the
front facing the river, and the south, but as time passed on the
river receded from its banks so far as to leave behind it an misightly marsh in full view of the entrance. Therefore it came
to pass that the original front became the back, and when carriages came they drove under the north instead of the south^ortico, and pedestrians entered from the same side.
' - : '
As the nation grew in numbers and in wealth, thousands attended the New Year receptions where once upon a time the callers had been numbered by the hundreds, 6r even less. So immense
were the crowds that it became necessary to provide a private
entrance for the foreign diplomats and the members of the Cabinet and their wives, by converting a south window into a door
by placing steps against it. For the exit of the reception guests
a north window was similarlyLJitilked, with the addition of a
^wooden bridge reaching to the sidewalk.
So long as the crowds attending the President's New Year
�THE PRESIDENT'S NEW YEAR RECEPTIONS
_ 5
were small enough to be manageable, the early custom of serving
refreshments was continued, but as the years rolled on and the
attendance increased, it became impossible to do so. The. State
dining-room, atfirstamply sufficient in size, gradually became so
^crowded that a long, narrow table had to be set in the hall.
But before many years even this device failed to supply the
demand for space. Those who have witnessed the unseemly
rush of a great crowd about a supper table, can readily tinderstand how itfinallybecame necessary to cease serving refreshments at all. On one occasion, for instance, President Jackson,
' with the lady he was escorting, was excluded from the supper
room by the rush of his guests to that popular point.
Thus of the Presidential New Year receptions of ye olden
tyme. From the then to the now of the present day is a far cry.
The^rst^ocial^even^^^
mgi-:New^Ye» reeeptio^
*
justly^dejserib^sby^
"
iand^i^afi^itHs^thKt^whens
^taste£uIIjr^«J^^
^ion^Ae^a^cesgo^e^
&
The callers, —there are thousands of them from kll ranks in
life,—are received by the President and his wife STthe Blue
Boom, the gem of the restored White House, and one of the
most finely proportioned rooms in this country* They are assisted in receiving their guests by the wives of the Vice President and of the members of the Cabinet. The precedence of the
callers is regulated by a strict etiquette. First come the members of the. Diplomatic Corps, led bv the Ambassador wh6 has
seen the longest service at the Capital, and is called the "Dean
of the Diplomatic Corps.' The diplomats axe accompanied by
their wives and the officials of their respective legations.
Following the Diplomatic Corps come the Justices of the
Supreme .Court; tho Senators and'^Bepresentatives; the Commander and other officers of the. District of Columbia; the officers of the Army arid Navy—led .respectively by a general and
an admiral; officers of the Marine Corps_and_ofJ;lie-M3litia • of
the District; the. members of the Civil Service, Xnter-state, and
1
-
�6
THE PRESIDENT'S NEW YEAR RECEPTIONS
other Commissions; after these oome the: Assistant Secretaries
and Bureau Chiefs; then the Veteran organizations, and finally,"
and by far in greater numbers, the general.public
ipi From six to eight thousand people shake hands with the TPresi| dent and his wife, provided the latter is able to stand, the strain.
feThis in itself is no light ordettf, but it is not such to the President alone of the participants in the great New Year receptions.
The guests are often compelled to stand for hours in a line outside, exposed to the elements, whatever they ma.jrberwhether
clear or stormy, warm or cold, windy or calm, the waiting line
— moving forward towards its goal a step at a time, with long intervals between each step.
• , '.
Many reach the receiving party worn out with fatigue, and
with their elaborate costumes all awry, if not actually torn to
ribbons, and are shot through the door as though from a mortar
by therelentlesspressure-behind, and in such a dazed and confused condition that they pass by the President tq reach whom
they have endured hours of almost danger,—without sotouchas
seeing him.
The Superintendent of Public Grounds arid Buildings, who
is always an Army officer, acts as master of ceremonies, and ak
ways stands on the President's left, at the door of entrance. An
usher asks the name of each guest, and repeats it to the master
of ceremonies, who announces it to the President as its owner
files by. Another officer, usually of the Navy, stands by the President 's .wife and introduces each guest to her. As must inevitably result, this hasty taking of names by the wholesale causes
many mistakes to be made, and many arevthe disgusted; and in-r
dignant glances bestowed upon the unlucky ushers and master
of ceremonies. But there is no time to correct any such mistakes, which, after all, are immaterial, jfoir it is. literally "touch
andjro?' from beginmng.to end of the great New Yeagroception
~ feS^ml^Si^^ilfe^^.
' To t^ie President and his rec^ving party these recep^ons are
a mere formality. A quick touching of hand$, a half spoken
greeting, and-the living stream,flowsc^i with mind and eye, and
body dazed, and. wearied, while other hundreds of men arid
�THE PRESIDENT'S NEW YEAR RECEPTIONS
7
women in the still waiting line are almost fainting in the heavy
pressure behind them. Nobody is having a-good time; everybody, indoors and out, is either good naturedly uncomfortable,
or else driven to the verge of profanity, if not beyond.
Do they " pay,'' these Presidential New Year receptions ?
- 7
�
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Michael Waldman
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<p>Michael Waldman was Assistant to the President and Director of Speechwriting from 1995-1999. His responsibilities were writing and editing nearly 2,000 speeches, which included four State of the Union speeches and two Inaugural Addresses. From 1993 -1995 he served as Special Assistant to the President for Policy Coordination.</p>
<p>The collection generally consists of copies of speeches and speech drafts, talking points, memoranda, background material, correspondence, reports, handwritten notes, articles, clippings, and presidential schedules. A large volume of this collection was for the State of the Union speeches. Many of the speech drafts are heavily annotated with additions or deletions. There are a lot of articles and clippings in this collection.</p>
<p>Due to the size of this collection it has been divided into two segments. Use links below for access to the individual segments:<br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=43&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=2006-0469-F+Segment+1">Segment One</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=43&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=2006-0469-F+Segment+2">Segment Two</a></p>
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Michael Waldman
Office of Speechwriting
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1993-1999
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2006-0469-F
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Segment One contains 1071 folders in 72 boxes.
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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Adobe Acrobat Document
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paper
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[State of the Union 1999] History: [Folder 1] [1]
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Office of Speechwriting
Michael Waldman
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Box 52
<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36403"> Collection Finding Aid</a>
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White House Staff and Office Files
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7763296
42-t-7763296-20060469F-Seg1-052-012-2015