Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1910-08-27
ROOSEVELT
GREETED AS
RANCHMAN
Continued from Page one-)

be calleu &c al vest aau especIaI-
ly for those of the cattle country.
For number Of years 1 lived on
ranch on the Little Missouri. sharing
work and play. good fortune and bad
fortune, with my neighbors. working
on the roundup, serving as delegate
from the Little Missouri roundup dis
trict to the Montana Stock Growers
association and even at times acting as
q deputy sheriff at my end of the
county.
Most Valuable Years.
count those years as among the
most valuable of my life. because moth
ing breeds such community Of feeling
as to work with ones fellow men at
their life tasks and to learn to know
their feelings by actually sharing
them. The man of the west through
out the successive stages of western
growth has always been one of the
two or three most typical figures
indeed, am tempted TO say the most
typical fgure-in American life, and
no man can really understand our
country and appreciate what 1t really
Is and what it promises unless he has
the fullest and closest sympathy with
the ideals and aspirations of the west.
The prime reason for this IS to be
found in the fact that the westerner
is so good an American. He is an
American first and foremost. For this
is the great lesson. friends. that all of
US need to learn and to keep. the les
son that it is unimportant whether a
I, !,
provided he is genuinely and in good
faith an American. that he feels every
part of the United States as his own
and that he is honestly DESTROYS to up
hold the interests of all other Ameri
cans in whatever section of the coun-
try they may dwell.
The Expanding of the West.
hundred wears ago. when men
spoke of the west. they meant the
country between the Alleghenies and
the Mississippi. Fifty years ago the
white mans west took in Minnesota.
Iowa and Kansas and then skipped
across TO California and Oregon. The
country Of the great plains and the
Rockies. the country in which you
whom 1 am now addressing lead your
lives and do your work. has grown up
within my own lifetime.
I myself saw and took part in the
closing years of the pioneer period. and
1t was my great privilege to work side
by side with the pioneers-the ranch
men. the miners. the cowpunchers.
the mule SINNERS. the bullwhackers
who actually opened up the country.
l have seen the herds and fiockS of
the cattlemen and sheepmen supplant
the game. l have seen the fortunate
movement by which the small farm
has tended gradually TO take the place
of the great unfanced ranch.
. now travel in every comfort on
railways across lands which when 1
first rode across them were still the
home of the Indian and the buffalo.
and ! find cities where one can obtain
not merely comfort. but luxury. in the
places where thirty years ago there
was not a building beyond log hut
or a 'dobe house.
The men who did this work were en-
gagged in the final stages of conquer
ing the continent. and it was their
privilege to do one of the great works
of all time, to do their part in the per
Torrance of an epic feat in the his
tory of the progress of mankind.
L have used the word progress. The
west stands for growth. for progress
So must the whole American people
stand. A great democracy must be
progressive or it will soon cease to be
either great or democratic. No ma
ton, no state. no party. can stand still
1t must either go forward or go back
ward. and it becomes useless IL 1t goes
backward. Therefore 1 greet you. men
of the west, and 1 stand for progress.
as all men must stand who are pro-
gressive.
The pioneers and their immediate
successors won victory only by prov
ing that they possessed the great, mas
terful qualities which lie at the foun-
dalton of national greatness. There
are certain well meaning men Of intel
lectual cultivation, but lacking mental
and moral robustness, who complain