NATIONAL DUTIES 



ADDRESS AT MINNESOTA STATE FAIR, SEPT. 2, 1901 



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 were pioneers, and that pio 

 neers 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 com 

 monwealths. They were men of hope and expecta 

 tion, 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 there 

 fore it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more 

 expansive power than any other in the wide world. 

 You whom I am now addressing stand for the 

 most part but one generation removed from these 

 pioneers. You are typical Americans, for you have 

 done the great, the characteristic, the typical work of 

 our American life. In making homes and carving 

 out careers for yourselves and your children, you 

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