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Show THE PLACE WE OCCUPY. Before the on-sweep of the great Republic of the United States, the world stands awed and apprehensive. ap-prehensive. Everywhere present is an energy, an aggressiveness that brooks no restraint; the work accomplished year by year is something immeasurable, im-measurable, and slower nations unconsciously are saying to themselves, "What is the culmination to be?" The grandfathers of this irresistible host fought under Washington when the forests of the New World came close down to the sea; now the continent has been swept over, subdued, transformed trans-formed and, commanding both oceans, this new race stands forth as if about to undertake the conquest con-quest of the world. That is all true and it has all come about through natural causes. At first it was a fight for life. There was but a stubborn, rocky soil out of which to obtain food. Then before that s6il could be tilled the forest had to be felled. Then there was the savage in the path that had to be pushed back or annihilated. Then the lubricating fluid of commerce, money, was so scarce that all that could be done was by barter. There were no manufactures, few mines, only the stubborn soil was given them, the soil and the privilege of going go-ing out against the Atlantic gales to fish or to carry away the raw products of the soil to exchange ex-change for the goods of other lands. By land and sea it was but a fight for life. Who kept the rec-; rec-; ord of the brave lives that were thus worn out, of the overborne hearts that under the mighty burdens bur-dens oroke and made no sign? But all that time a national character was Ifoiming, such a character as would naturally crjbtalize around a people that depended upon nothing except their own exertions, that feared nothing save God. Then men, North and South, " began with a determination that their new home should be made sacred to liberty. They knew the history of Europe; they knew that for fifteen I hundred years its soil had been soaked with blood; that it had been swept by a thousand wars, and that almost every one had been instigated by either the merciless despotism of kings or priests I and they determined from the first that the people peo-ple should rule and that there should be an abso-lute abso-lute and perpetual separation of church and State. When the time was ripe they vindicated their determination through the blood and suf-foing suf-foing of an eight years' war against the mightiest Power of the earth and were victorious. Then ame the framing of a new government and the wisdom was given them to fashion it in a form to give expression to the dream that had been nuised by five generations of ancestors. Then, vith neither king nor priest to interfere, with the Miction of no oppressive law to restrain their perfect per-fect freedom, the mighty work before them, the work of building up a great nation was entered upon with an enthusiasm that was contagious. Then steam came to take from man his heaviest burdens, steam and labor-saving machines without with-out limitation, and finally the magnetic telegraph began its work of gathering daily the world's history his-tory of the previous day, while the perfecting press picked up the rude sheets, transformed them and laid them clear and beautiful before the people every morning. Then when the continent beyond the great Western river was subdued and the people peo-ple were disciplined and matured, precious metal mines were given them to reinforce their treasury trea-sury and credit and to supply wings for their commerce and material for their factories, and that flow of gold has been a stream of steadilv-increasing steadilv-increasing volume for now more than fifty years, with the result that no other such progress was ever seen, no other such industrial miracles were ever before performed. It has all been natural, too, for two reasons. First, when men undertake and carry through great enterprises they grow mentally with the work. When all the millions of a people are thus engaged, the result can but be a superior people. Second, when men are unhampered by useless or oppressive laws, when in their souls they know that they may do any legitimate thing without restraint or question, with love of such a country comes the ambition to excel in it. Then as the possibilities of the land opened more and more it finally became apparent that there was no limit upon an American boy's achievements except in the measure of his own courage to dare to grasp the triumphs within his reach. Is it any wonder that ours are a great people? Is it any wonder that the cramped and lagging nations of the old world look on dazed at the progress pro-gress they behold on our side of the Atlantic? But looking back we discover that all that has been accomplished has been due first to the form of government which the fathers framed and the spirit which they breathed into it, and, second, to the honest work of our people. These truths should mako us humble and still vigilant. We never for a moment should forget that as the progress pro-gress was brought by labor, labor in all the industrial in-dustrial and intellectual fields, so it can only be maintained through continuous labor. Again, as the work was made possible through the absolute personal, political and religious freedom of our people, so with a jealous care must that freedom bo guarded, for when any shackle of tyranny or superstition is put upon man his energies are dwarfed, his clear vision is weakened, and when a man learns to believe that certain exalted privileges of right attach to some men which privileges priv-ileges he does not possess, then his walk takes on the shambling steps of the slave. |