Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1908-11-06
PRESIDENT FIXES
DAY OF THANKS
PROCLAMATION CALLS ATTEN-
TloN TO GROWTH AND PROS.
PERiTY IN ALL THINGS.
THE SOUL TO BE CONSIDERED
President Roosevelt Says We Must
Smite Down Wrong and Strive
for Public and Private
Righteousness.

Washington, d. C.-The president
on Sunday issued the annual Thanks
giving proclamation, in which he
pointed out the steady growth Of the
nation in strength, worldly power,
wealth and population and that our
average OF individual comfort and
well-being is higher than that of any
other country in the world. For this,
he declares, Americans owe it to the
Almighty to show equal progress In
moral and spiritual things. The
proclamation follows:
BY the President of the United States
of America-A Proclamation:
Once again the season is at hand
when, according to the ancient Gus
tom of our people, it becomes the duty
of the president to appoint a day Of
prayer and of thanksgiving to God.
Year by year this nation grows in
strength and worldly power. During
the century and a quarter that has
elapsed since our entry into the circle
of Independent peoples we have grown
and prospered in material things to a
degree never known before, and not
now known in any other country. The
13 colonies which struggled along the
seacoast of the Atlantic and were
hemmed in but a few miles west of
tidewater by the Indian-haunted
wilderness have been transformed into
the mightiest republic which the
world has ever seen. Its domains
stretch across the continent from one
to the other of the two greatest
oceans, and it exercises domain alike
in the Arctic and tropic realms. The
growth in wealth and population has
surpassed even the growth in terri
tory. Nowhere else in the world is
the average of individual comfort and
material well-being as high as in our
fortunate land.
For the very reason that in material
well-being we have thus abounded, we
owe it to the Almighty to show equal
progress in moral and spiritual things.
With a nation, as with the individuals
who make up nation, material we'll
being is an Indispensable foundation
But the foundation avails nothing by
itself. That life is wasted, and worse
than wasted, which is spent in piling,
heap upon heap, those things which
minister merely to the pleasure of the
body and to the power that rests only
on wealth. Upon material well-being
as foundation must be raised the
structure of the lofty life of the spirit,
if this nation is properly to fulfill its
great mission and to accomplish all
that we so ardently hope and DESIRE
The things of the body are good; the
things of the intellect better; but best
of all are the things of the soul, for, in
the nation as in the individual, in the
long run it is character that counts.
Let us therefore as people set our
faces resolutely against evil, and with
broad character, with kindliness and
good will toward all men, but with un-
determination to smite down
wrong, strive with all the strength
that is given us for righteousness in
public and in private life.
Now, therefore, l, Theodore Roose-
velt, president of the United States, do
set apart Thursday, the 26th day of
November next, as a day of general
Thanksgiving and prayer, and on that
day | recommend that the people shall
cease from their daily work. and in
their homes or in their churches, meet
devoutly to thank the Almighty for the
many and great blessings they have
received in the past, and to pray that
they may be given strength so to order
their lives as to deserve continuation
of these blessings in the future.
In witness whereof | have hereunto
set my hand and caused the seal of the
United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this
51st day of October, in the year of Our
Lord one thousand nine hundred and
eight and of the independence of the
United States the one hundred and
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.