Our entire policy in irrigation, in forestry, in handling the public lands, should be in recognition of that truth, to favor in every way the man who wishes to take up a given area of soil and thereon to build a home in which he will rear…

Base is the man who inflicts a wrong, and base is the man who suffers a wrong to be done him.

Let us in our turn with equal courage, equal hardihood and manliness, carry on the task that our forefathers have intrusted to our hands; and let us resolve that we shall leave to our children and our children’s children an even mightier…

There is not a workman in any of our yards who did his duty in connection with the guns, the armor plate, the turrets, the hulls, or anything, who has not his full right to a share in the credit of those victories.

You all did your part in winning them just as much as the men who actually fought.

It is curious how our fate as a Nation has often driven us forward toward greatness in spite of the protests of many of those esteeming themselves in point of training and culture best fitted to shape the Nation’s destiny.

In 1803, when we acquired the territory stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, there were plenty of wise men who announced that we were acquiring a mere desert, that it was a violation of the Constitution to acquire it, and that…

In every instance how the after events of history have falsified the predictions of the men of little faith!

There are critics so feeble and so timid that they shrink back when this Nation asserts that it comes in the category of the nations who dare to be great, and they want to know, forsooth, the cost of greatness and what it means.

We took Alaska thirty-five years ago, and at last we have begun to wake up to the heritage that thereby we have handed over to our children.

The immediate cause of the great development of Alaska of course is to be found in its mines; but most of the people of this country are wholly in error when they think of the mines as being the sole or even the chief permanent cause of…

Not only her mines, her fisheries, her forests, but her agriculture and her stock-raising will combine to make Alaska one of the great wealth-producing portions of our Republic.

Just in the same way I want to have you see that the lumber industry is exploited in a way which, while giving a great return to those engaged in it at the moment, shall also secure the preservation of the forests for the settlers and the…

Nor must we forget in speaking of Alaska the immense importance that the Territory has from the standpoint of the needs of the Nation as a whole, as a dominant power in the Pacific.

Exactly as with the building of the Isthmian Canal we shall make our Atlantic and our Pacific coasts in effect continuous, so the possession and peopling of the Alaskan seacoast puts us in a position of dominance as regards the Pacific…

The whole question is a business, an economic question; an economic question for the Nation, a business question for the individual.

Our aim should be to get the fullest use from the forest to-day, and yet to get that benefit in ways which will keep the forests for our children in the generations to come; so that, for instance, the country adjoining Puget Sound shall…

You are fortunate in having such climatic conditions, such conditions of soil, that here more than anywhere else the forest renews itself quickly, so as in a comparatively short number of years to be again a great mercantile and industrial…

There is no other State in the Union, and I include all of them, which has greater natural advantages and a more assured future of greatness than this State of Washington.

The men of my own age whom I am addressing will not be old men before we see Alaska one of the rich and strong States of the Union.

I thank fortune that the National Legislature has begun to wake up to the fact that Alaska has interests of vital importance not merely to her but to the entire Union.

Alaska contains a territory which will within this century support as large a population as the combined Scandinavian countries of Europe; those countries from which has sprung as wonderful a race as ever imprinted its characteristics upon…

Washington will owe no small part of its future greatness, and that greatness will be great indeed, to the fact that it is thus doing its share in acquiring for the United States the dominance of the Pacific.

I do not say merely workingmen, because I hold that every good American who does his duty must be a workingman.

There are many different kinds of work to do; but so long as the work is honorable, is necessary, and is well done the man who does it well is entitled to the respect of his fellows.