Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1910-08-31
PROGRESSIVE WEST IS
PRAISED BYROOSEVELT
Vigorous Speech by Former President
Is Climax of Great Frontier Days
Celebration at Cheyenne, Wyo.---
Cattle Range Men Warmly Greet
Their Old Associate.

today calls for greater variety of good
qualities than were needed on the from
tier. There is need at present to
courage the development OF new abilities
which can be brought to high perfection
only by a kind of training useless in pio-
neer times; but these new qualities can
only supplement, and never supplant, the
old, homely virtues the need for the
special and distinctive pioneer virtues is
as great as ever. In other words as our
civilization grows older and more COM
pick while it is true that we need new
forms of trained ability, and need to de-
velop men whose lives are devoted wholly
to the pursuit of special objects, it is yet
also true that we need a greater and not
a less development of the fundamental
frontier virtues These virtues include
the power of self-help together with the
power of joining with others for mutual
help and, what is especially important,
the feeling of comradeship, of social good
fellowship. Any man who had the good
fortune to live among the old frontier
conditions must, in looking back, realize
how vital was this feeling of general
comradeship and social fellowship There
are good men and pad men, in the new
communities just as in the old commun1-
ties, and the conditions on the frontier
We're such that the qualities of the good
and bad alike were rather more strikingly
but among the men who tried to lead
Woodworking decent lives, there was a
feeling of genuine democracy, which rep
resented an approach to the American
ideal which we certainly should do ev-
erything in our power to preserve. We
did not try to say that men were equal
when they were not equal, but we did
our best to secure something like an
equality of opportunity and equality of
reward for good service; and moreover,
each man expected to be received, and,
on the whole, was received wherever he
went. on the footing that his merits war
ranted
Now so far as possible these qualities
and conditions that bring about these
qualities should be kept in the great
states which are growing out of the old
frontier communities. We need to strive
fol- the general social betterment of the
people a whole, and yet to encourage
Individual liberty and set high reward
on individual initiative up to the point
where they become detrimental to the
general welfare
Wrong Doors and Wrong Systems.
In continually and earnestly striving for
this betterment of social and economic
conditions. in our complex Industrial civil
lzation, we should work in the old from
tier spirit of brotherly comradeship and
good will. I do not mean that we should
refrain from hating wrong; on the con-
trary I would preach frey wrath
against wrong. But I would not preach
such wrath against the wrong-doer, save
in those cases where his wrong-doing
really is due to evil moral attributes on
his part and not to wrong or false sys-
TEN, of which he is almost as much the
victim as the beneficiary Sometimes
wrong represents the deliberate wicked
ness of the wrong-doer, in which case
the remedy is to punish him, but some
times it represents the effects Of a false
social system, in which case the right
course is to alter what is false in the
system. Both principles need to be kept
in view as guides to our conduct, and 1t
is necessary sometimes to work in &C
cordance with one and sometimes in ac-
cordance with the other.
Before ending 1 wish to say word on
something which I believe should espe-
cially interest all men who live in the
open country. and especially all men who
during the past thirty years have lived
and worked on ranches. or have done
their life work in the wilder parts of our
land, on the great plains or among the
mountains. This phase Of our national
life in which the Stockman, the mining
prospector, were the chief characters, was
not only very important but also a
very picturesque phase. Often such
phase passes without any great artist
arising to commemorate it.
The old-time backwoodsman, for in
stance, the man Of the back country
who lived in the eastern forests through
which the waters ran eastward to the
Atlantic and westward to the Mississippi,
passed away without any PAINTER or
sculptor arising who possessed at once
both the keenness of vision to see what
a vital and picturesque figure the Back
woodsman was, and the genius adequate
1y to present that figure. The artist who
saw that picturesqueness of the back
woodsman lacked the genius adequately
to commemorate it, while the artists of
real ability unfortunately had their eyes
turned towards Europe and lacked the ro-
bust originality which the novelist Coop
er showed-to see where their chances lay
to do great work But in our genera
ton. for our good fortune a great artist
arose who was capable of seeing and of
recording the infinite picturesqueness Of
the life of the plains and the Rockies.
Eulogy Of Remington.
OF course I speak OF Frederic Reming-
ton He was one of those Americans who
by his achievements distinctly deserved
we'll of America. He worked with pencil
with brush with chisel, he was both a
painter and a sculptor His pictures and
his few bronzes are equally good. When
my own regiment, a typically western
of the great plains and the mountains,
was disbanded at Montapk Point, the Off
GERS and enlisted men joined in giving
me Remington's Bronze Bronco Buster
a gift which I thought peculiarly appro-
pirate coming from such a body of men.
In Remington's pictures all the most
vivid and characteristic features of the
western pioneer life which is just closing
were set forth, and the concentrated
forever the men of the plains and the
mountains as they actually were. The
cowboy is his favorite type, but the min
ing prospector the frontier farmer, tho
man who guides ox-wagon or mule-team
the soldier, the Indian-all appear Now
wish very much that these men them
selves would in their turn provide a mon
ument for the great artist the sum of
whose activities represent such a feature
of American achievements, and, above
all, represents a commemoration of some
of the most interesting figures that have
ever appeared on the stage of American
life. A statue should be raised to Rem
ington by some really first class artist
Here at Cheyenne in this gathering
many hundreds of the men have come
together who were themselves typical
leaders in and representatives of the very
life which Remington so portrayed that
it will always live. I hope that these