45 Presidential Addresses 



members of the Saengerfest Association and all the 

 guests of Baltimore this evening. Since the begin- 

 ning of our country's history many different race 

 strains have entered to make up the composite 

 American. Out of and from each we have gained 

 something for our national character; to each we 

 owe something special for what it has contributed 

 to us as a people. 



It is almost exactly two hundred and twenty 

 years ago that the first marked immigration from 

 Germany to what were then the colonies in this 

 Western Hemisphere began. As is inevitable with 

 any pioneers those pioneers of the German race on 

 this side of the ocean had to encounter bitter priva- 

 tion, had to struggle against want in many forms; 

 had to meet and overcome hardship; for the people 

 that go forth to seek their well-being in strange 

 lands must inevitably be ready to pay as the price 

 of success the expenditure of all that there is in 

 them to overcome the obstacles in their way. It 

 was some fifty years later that the great tide of 

 German immigration in colonial times began to flow 

 hither; one of the leaders in it being Muhlenburg, 

 the founder of a family which has contributed to 

 military and civil life some of the worthiest figures 

 in American history. The first of the famous 

 speakers of the House of Representatives was 

 Muhlenburg, of German ancestry. 



Baltimore is a centre in that region of our land 

 where from the earliest days there was that inter- 

 mingling of ethnic strains which finally went to 



