The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-10-15
Living Issues.
PRESIDENT RoOsEvELTs MINNEAPOLIS
SPEECH.

An Address, Delivered Sept. I'd, in Which the
New President Outlined His Views on Ma,
tional Affairs.
In his admirable series of studies
of twentieth century problems DR.,
Lyman Abbott has pointed out that
we are a nation of pioneers that the
first. colonists to our shores we're
pioneers, and that pioneers selected
out from among the descendants of
these early pioneers, mingled with
others selected afresh from the Old
World, pushed westward into the
wilderness and laid the foundations
for new commemorative. They were
men of hope and expectations, of
enterprise and energy, for the men
of dull content or more dull despair
had no part in the great movement
into and across the new world. Our
country has been populated by
pioneers, and therefore it has in it
more energy, more enterprise, more
expansive power than any other in
the wide world.
THE HOME-MAKER BUILDS n STATE.
You whom l am now addressing
stand for the most part but n gen
Grafton removed from these pioneers.
You are typical Americans, for you
have done the great, the character
istio, the typical work of our Ameri-
can life. In making homes and oarv-
ing out for yourselves and
your children you have built up this
State. Throughout our history the
success of the home maker has been
but another name for the upbuilding
of the nation. The men who, with
ak in the forest and pickin the noun
tains and plow on the prairies, pushed
TO completion the dominion of our
people over the American wilderness
have given the definite shape to our
nation. They have shown the quail
ties of daring, endurance and far
sightedness, of eager desire for VIC
tory and stubborn refusal TO accept
defeat, which go to make up the
essential manliness of the American
character. Above all, they have
recognized in practical form the fun
damental law of SUCCESS in American
life-the law of worthy work, the
law of high, ~resolute endeavor. We
have but little room among our peo-
pie for the timid, the irresolute md
the idle, and it is no less true that
there is scant room in the world at
large for the nation with mighty
thews that dares not to be great.
NO ENVY OF THE IDLE.
Surely in speaking to the sons of
men who actually did the rough and
hard and infinitely glorious work Of
making the great northwest what it
now is I need hardly insist upon the
righteousness of this doctrine. In
your own vigorous lives you show
by every act how scant is your
patience with those who do not see
in the line of effort the life supremacy
worth living. Some times we hear
those who do not work spoken of
with envy. Surely the willfully idle
need arouse in the breast of a healthy
man no emotion stronger than that
of contempt, at the outside no emo
tion stronger than angry contempt
The feeling of envy would have in it
an admission of inferiority on our
part, to which the men who know
not the sterner joys of life are not
entitled. Poverty is a bitter thing,
but it is not as bitter as the exist
ence of restless vacuity and physical,
moral and intellectual fabbiness to
which those doom themselves who
elect,to spend all their years in that
vainest of all vain pursuits, the pur-
suit of mere pleasure as a sufficient
end in itself. The wilIfully idle man,
the willfully barren woman, has no
place in a sane, healthy and Vigor-
Gus community. Moreover, the gross
and hideous ~sel1shness for which
each stands defeats oven it's own
miserable aims.
THE HAPPIEST MAN.
Exactly as infinitely the happiest
woman is she who has borne and
brought up many healthy children, go
infinitely the happiest man is he who
has toiled hard and successfully in
his life work. The work may be
done in a thousand different ways
with the brain or the hands, in the
study, the field or the workshop-if
it is honest work, honestly done and