“I have known any number of Underhills in every walk of life, men who made their living in many different ways - men belonging to the professions, men who followed the sea, men who tilled the soil, men of means, men who made each day’s living by that days work with their hands - and all of them decent citizens. I won’t say that there are not some Underhills who are not decent, but fortunately I have not met them.”
-
Theodore
Roosevelt, address on dedication of Underhill monument at the Underhill Burying
Ground in Lattingtown, New York
President Theodore Roosevelt Address at Dedication of Underhill
Monument, July 11, 1908
Colonel
Underhill, Friends, and Neighbours. It gives me real pleasure to accept this
invitation, because I thought it a good thing that the founder of what has
become one of the distinctive Long Island families should have a monument
erected to him here. I shall not try to speak to you of the career of Captain
Underhill - a man who left his mark deep on the history of New England as well
as New Holland; one of the men who in the colonial times helped lay the
foundations for the nation that was to be for others will address you upon
his life. I want to say just a word or two in greeting you on what his career
and the career of his descendants should mean in our American life of to-day. I
have known Underhills all my life, on land and on water - bankers, lawyers,
storekeepers, farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths, captains of oyster boats,
fisherman, pilots - men of every calling and occupation. They have served well
in the army; they have served well in times of peace.
The founder of
the family here was a good soldier and a good citizen, and the Underhills of
to-day have furnished their full quota of good soldiers and good citizens in
their turn. If they had not, I would not have been here, I have no use
whatever for the man with nothing but a pedigree, the man the best part of whom
is under ground. I believe in the pride of ancestry, but only if it takes the
form of making the man or woman try to carry himself or herself well as regards
the duties of to-day. If at the time of the Civil War you, Mr. Chairman, had
felt that the fact that the original Captain Underhill was a fighter excused
you from fighting, I should have thought mighty little of you. The thing to do
is to feel (and I guess you, comrade, over there I mean the man with the
Grand Army button you will agree with me) that if you had ancestors who did
their duty it is doubly incumbent upon you to do your duty. I have known any
number of Underhills in every walk of life, men who made their living in many
different ways men belonging to the professions, men who followed the sea,
men who tilled the soil, men of means, men who made each day’s living by that
days work with their hands and all of them decent citizens. I won’t say that
there are not some Underhills who are not decent, but fortunately I have not
met them.
Now if there
is one lesson that we here in America ought continually to keep before us, it
is our substantial oneness, our substantial unity as a people; and one of the
best ways to exemplify that is by just such a family gathering as this. If the
family has been long enough in the land, why you will find its representatives
in every walk of life; you will find them filling all kinds of occupations; you
will find them as capitalists and wage-workers, farmers, mechanics,
professional men, everything; and the essential point to remember is that each
one is entitled to the fullest and heartiest respect if he does his duty well
in the position in life in which he happens to find himself. That is sound
American doctrine. I should not much care to attend an Underhill gathering that
was limited to capitalist Underhills, nor yet one limited to Underhill
wage-workers; but I am glad to attend one where every one comes in on the basis
of decent American citizenship, each standing ruggedly on his own feet as a man
should.
The same thing
that applies to you Underhills here applies to the rest of us who are not
Underhills in the country at large. We have made this country what it is
partly because we have measurably succeeded in securing in the past equality of
opportunity here. That is very different from equality of reward. I believe
emphatically in doing everything that can be done by law or otherwise to keep
the avenues of occupation, of employment, of work, of interest, so open that
there shall be, so far as is humanly possible to achieve it, a measurable
equality of opportunity equality of opportunity for each man to show the
stuff that is in him. But when it comes to reward, let him get what by his
energy, foresight, intelligence, thrift, courage, he is able to get with the
opportunity open. I don’t believe in coddling anyone. I would no more permit
the strong to oppress the weak than tell a weak or a vicious man that he ought
by rights to have the reward due only to the man who actually earns it. Very
properly we in this country set our faces against privilege.
There can be
no grosser example of privilege than that set before us as an ideal by certain
Socialist writers - the ideal that every man shall put into the common fund
what he can, which would mean what he chose, and should take out whatever he
wanted; in other words, this theory is that the man who is vicious, foolish, a
drag on the whole community, who contributes less than his share to the common
good. Should take out what is not his, what he has not earned; that he shall
rob his neighbour of what that neighbour has earned. This particular
Socialistic ideal would be to enthrone privilege as one of its grossest,
crudest, most dishonest, most harmful, and most unjust forms. Equality of
opportunity to render service, yes, I will do everything I can to bring it
about. Equality of reward, no, unless there is also equality if service. If
the service is equal, let the reward be equal, but let the reward depend on the
service. And mankind being composed as it is, there will be inequality of
service for a long time to come, no matter how great the equality of
opportunity may be, and just so long as there is inequality of service, it is
eminently desirable that there should be inequality of reward.
But in
securing a measurable equality of opportunity, let us no more be led astray by
the doctrinaire advocates of a lawless and destructive Individualism than by
the doctrinaire advocates of a deadening Socialism. As society progresses and
becomes more complex, it becomes desirable to do many things for the common
good by common effort. No empirical line can be laid down as to where and when
such common effort by the whole community should supplant or supplement private
and individual effort. Each case must be judged on its own merits. Similarly,
when a private or corporate fortune of vast size is turned to a business use
which jeopardizes the welfare of all the small men, then in the interest of
everybody, in the interest of true individualism, the collective or common
power of the community must be exercised to control and regulate for the common
good this business use of vast wealth; and while doing this we must make it
evident that we frown upon arrogance and oppression.
You see, Dominie, you let yourself in for a little sermon when you came here. I did not intend to speak as much. I want to thank you for having given me the chance to come over and meet my fellow-Long Islanders, my neighbours, my fellow-citizens.
