Thomas B. Reed

[Speech of John William Griggs, ex-Governor of New Jersey, at the 128th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 17, 1896. Alexander E. Orr, President of the Chamber, presided. In 1897 ex-Governor Griggs succeeded Joseph McKenna as Attorney-General in the Cabinet of President McKinley.]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—I did not know this was Thanksgiving day. [Laughter.] I did not know that there were any discontents till I got over here to-night. When I arrive at this period on an occasion like this, and see you sitting in comfortable expectation, with your cigars lighted, and your intellects also lighted by the contact of such a flame as we have received from the distinguished Postmaster-General [William L. Wilson], I always think that the composition of the boy on Sir Walter Raleigh is applicable. He wrote a composition, and it was like this: "Sir Walter Raleigh was a very great man; he took a voyage and discovered America, and then he took another voyage and discovered Virginia, and when he had discovered Virginia he discovered the potato; and when he had discovered the potato, he discovered tobacco. And when he had done so, he called his associates about him, and said: 'My friends, be of good cheer; for we have this day lighted in England a flame which, by God's grace, shall never be quenched.'" [Laughter.]

New Jersey greets to-night the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. [Applause.] We are your friends and your neighbors. We have furnished you a candidate in this election, who represents in the person of Garret A. Hobart [applause] the sympathies and the sentiments of such men as I see gathered here. We take much of our inspiration from New York; not all of it. [Laughter.] We have some kinds of inspiration peculiar to ourselves, of which we are always glad to invite our New York friends to partake in moderation and properly diluted. [Laughter.]

Our citizens mingle with yours in all the daily walks of life. We read the same newspapers. We dress as you do, only not so well; and we vote the same ticket, by a large majority. [Applause.] This similarity is not always apparent. The impressions of the traveller through New Jersey are generally of salt marsh and sand banks and long monotonous stretches of landscape, and, where the railroad pierces some shabby neighborhood, the weather-boards bear shining invitations to take various brands of liver pills [laughter], to chew "Virgin leaf," or to "give the baby Castoria;" but we have green meadows bright with shining brooks; we have high mountains and pleasant valleys as well as marsh and sand dunes; and, instead of liver-pills and Castoria, by a large majority, we are for the gold cure. [Great applause.]

I cannot let this opportunity pass without referring to the great work which this Chamber has wrought for the state and city whose name it bears and for the country at large. It is a long interval since these dinners were held at Fraunce's tavern, but during all that period, this institution has stood as the pilot, the guide, the director, and pioneer in all wise policies of commerce and trade and patriotism. [Applause.] You have bestowed not only wisdom and enlightenment and courage on the world of commerce, but millions of dollars upon the unfortunate victims of fire and flood and fever. You have been the promoters of good fortune and the comforters of misfortune. I wish that the people of this land could understand how much true and loyal patriotism, how much disinterested devotion to the highest interests of the country are found among just such men as compose the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. [Applause.]

During your corporate life you have seen a great country grow into independence; you have seen it advance and extend along all the lines of progress and prosperity until the seven wonders of the world, of which we learned in our youth, have been lost sight of and forgotten in the thousand greater wonders of this industrial age. You have seen education become the common provision of every State for every child of the Republic. You have seen intelligence increase; you have seen reason and reasonableness, the ability to take right views of things, become more universal among this people than among the people of any other land. [Applause.] You have seen the average of comfort and prosperity higher among all classes in this country than could be found at any other age of the world and any other land upon the surface of the earth. [Applause.]

And yet there are complainings, there are discontents, and there are dissatisfactions, and gloomy minds think they see, in these, evidences and signs that there is coming a social revolution, an overturning of our system of popular government, and the substitution for it of some plan whereby, by legal enactments, all the citizens of the Republic can be made comfortable and rich without regard to fortune or ability or frugality or merit.

In one sense discontent is a good thing. It is the opposite of self-satisfaction. [Laughter.] It is a good thing to appreciate that we have not done our best, and then try to do it. It is a good thing to understand that we have not made the most of our opportunities. In this sense, discontent is the spur of ambition, the incentive to better work, the mountain of progress up which, from height to height, civilization has climbed to where now with shining face she stands still pointing upward to heights unknown. [Applause.]

But there is another kind of discontent, born of ignorant and jealous envy, that seeks not to repair its mistakes nor to profit by its failures, not to build up, but to tear down. There is in many a sense of hopelessness over hopeless misfortune; and with these it is more to pity than to blame. But, withal, in these discontents there is a menace to the Republic. They afford the opportunity for the demagogue and the cheap candidate for public office. [Laughter and applause.] Glory to the American people! They cannot be fooled all the time, nor some of the time. They are too level-headed, too intelligent, too patriotic to be caught by appeals of the demagogue and the social revolutionist, to the dictates and sentiments of envy, hatred and malice.

May I venture to suggest that there are some ways by which it is possible for us to minimize the danger we find in these discontents? The American people, as I have said, have not up to date been fooled. They are the nation's court; they deserve a better certificate of character than a certain colored man who, when he was about to leave his master's employ because of the mysterious disappearance of certain small articles about the house, asked for a certificate of character to take to his next employer, and his employer said: "Well, 'Rastus, I can give you a good certificate for energy and ability, but I cannot say much about your honesty." "Tell you what, boss," says 'Rastus, after a moment's reflection: "can't you put it in that I am just as honest as my instincts will let me be?" [Laughter.]

The first remedy I would suggest, and it is one that is to be ever applied, is education. Reduce the percentage of illiteracy. Let the public schools teach not only reading and writing, but let public schools teach all the principles of American popular government. [Applause.] Let us go back to the days in which I was taught to write, when the copybook bore a text taken from Poor Richard—"Industry and frugality lead to wealth," or "Who by the plough would thrive, himself must either hold or drive,"—there was not anything said in those days about legislating a boy into wealth or comfort or ease, especially at the expense of anybody else. [Applause.]

The next remedy I would speak of is to cast out the demagogue. They are the fellows that are the curse of both and of all political parties. We have had them from the days of Julius CÆsar and Marc Antony down to date. [Laughter.] These smooth, sleek, mellifluous-tongued fellows that always have the same blood-stained garment to hold up before the populace, and some forged will to read, whereby the people were to get great legacies which they never could collect, let us cast them out. Let us frown upon them in both parties, so that they never have a standing on any political platform. [Applause.] Why, it makes the blood of an honest, straightforward, intelligent, American citizen boil to see the impudence, the hypocrisy, of men of this kind,—and they belong to both parties. I heard a story of one who used, when Long Branch was more popular than it is now, to go down there for a summer outing. One day he went out in the surf to bathe. He was strong and vigorous and bold, and he swam out beyond the breakers; he was heading strongly and fearlessly for the European shore. All at once, a shark, a man-eater, was coming the other way, and swam up squarely in front of him. They eyed each other for a moment, and then the shark blushed and swam out. [Laughter and applause.]

Then, let us have more mutual sympathy and confidence between all classes and conditions of men. The man who works for wages, day by day, is our equal in right and our equal at the ballot-box. Very often he has, generally he has, as high instincts, as loyal and true a heart, as his employer. [Applause.] There is no reason why his employer or the candidate for office or anybody else should make friends with him only about election-time. Be his friend all the year round. Show him that you sympathize with him as a fellow-citizen. This is not condescension. It is his right. It is not altruism. You understand what that is. The teacher told her class in Sunday-school: "Now, my children, you know an altruist is one who sacrifices his own interests to the interests of his fellows." "Oh! yes," says one boy, "I know; a fellow who makes his sacrifice hit." [Laughter.]

But let there be confidence between the men that earn wages and the men that pay wages. Let them meet together on a plane of political equality, and they will learn to respect the employer, and the employer, take my word for it, will learn to respect them. [Applause.]

And then, let us stop making citizens out of unworthy material. [Applause.] We welcome all those that come from over the sea, men of merit and worth and proper instincts who want to build and work among us. We do not want those who only come here to tear down and destroy. We have had the gates wide open. They have been coming—all sorts and all conditions and all beliefs. Let us shut those gates, and open them hereafter only to men of merit with right instincts. [Applause.] The law of the land declares that no subject of any foreign government shall be naturalized unless he can prove to the satisfaction of the court that he has been well attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States. How that provision has been mocked! Why, we have taken into citizenship with us thousands of men who not only were not attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, who not only did not know what those principles are, but who held principles diametrically opposed to it. Now, let us see that America suffers no longer from indigestion [laughter], from a surfeited feast of foreign anarchists and socialists and revolutionists; give us good men and true, who will not impede our digestion, and keep out those that tend to indigestion. [Applause.]

And then, let every citizen go into politics. [Laughter.] Oh, not for what is in it, but for the good of his country, to speak, write, organize, lead processions and keep it up. Rally round the flag, and keep on rallying! [Applause.] Do not let your enthusiasm and your patriotism evaporate and die away in the shouts that follow one triumphant campaign. Keep them up the whole year round—the four years round. You have heard from two sources, to-night, how important it is that we should always be vigilant and alert to defend, to educate and scatter knowledge and the spirit of intelligence among all the people. It is a very old saying but can never be too often repeated, that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

"O freedom! thou art not, as poets dream,
A fair young girl with light and delicate limbs,
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap
With which the Roman master crowned his slave,
When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
Arm'd to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarr'd
With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs
Are strong with struggling.... Oh! not yet,
Mayst thou unbrace thy corselet nor lay by
Thy sword; nor yet, O Freedom! close thy lids
In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps,
And thou must watch and combat till the day
Of the new earth and heaven."

[Great applause.]