214 Presidential Addresses 



perity to a people or greatness to a nation. All 

 that can be done by the law-maker and the adminis 

 trator is to give the best chance possible for the peo 

 ple of the country themselves to show the stuff that 

 is in them. President McKinley was elected in 

 1896 on the specific pledge that he would keep 

 the financial honor of the Nation untarnished and 

 would put our economic system on a stable basis, 

 so that our people might be given a chance to 

 secure the return of prosperity. Both pledges 

 have been so well kept that, as is but too often 

 the case, men are beginning to forget how much 

 the keeping of them has meant. When people 

 have become very prosperous they tend to become 

 sluggishly indifferent to the continuation of the 

 policies that brought about their prosperity. At such 

 times as these it is of course a mere law of nature 

 that some men prosper more than others, and too 

 often those who prosper less, in their jealousy of 

 their more fortunate brethren, forget that all have 

 prospered somewhat. I ask you soberly to remem 

 ber that the complaint made at the present day of 

 our industrial or economic conditions never takes 

 the form of stating that any of our people are less 

 well off than they were seven or eight years back, 

 before President McKinley came in and his policies 

 had a chance to be applied ; but that the complaint is 

 that some people have received more than their share 

 of the good things of the world. There was no 

 such complaint eight years ago, in the summer of 

 1894. Complaint was not then that any one had 



