ial and social progress has been so vast that alike for
weal and for woe, the people share the opportunities and bear
the burdens common to the entire civilized world. The problems
before us are fundamentally the same east and west of the
Mississippi, in the new States and in the old, and exactly the
same qualities are required for their successful solution.

We meet here to-day to commemorate a great event, an event which
marks an era in statesmanship no less than in pioneering. It is
fitting that we should pay our homage in words; but we must in
honor make our words good by deeds. We have every right to take
a just pride in the great deeds of our forefathers; but we show
ourselves unworthy to be their descendants if we make what they
did an excuse for our lying supine instead of an incentive to
the effort to show ourselves, by our acts, worthy of them. In
the administration of city, State, and nation, in the management
of our home life and conduct of our business and social
relations, we are bound to show certain high and fine qualities
of character under penalty of seeing the whole heart of our
civilization eaten out while the body still lives.

We justly pride ourselves on our marvelous material prosperity,
and such prosperity must exist in order to establish a
foundation upon which a higher life can be built; but unless we
do in very fact build this higher life thereon, the material
prosperity itself will go but for very little. Now, in 1903, in
the altered conditions, we must meet the changed and changing
problems with the spirit shown by the men who in 1803 and in
subsequent years, gained, explored, conquered, and settled this
vast territory, then a desert, now filled with thriving and
populous States.

The old days were great because the men who lived in them had
mighty qualities; and we must make the new days great by showing
the same qualities. We must insist upon courage and resolution,
upon hardihood, tenacity, and fertility in resource; we must
insist upon the strong virile virtues; and we must insist no
less upon the virtues of self-restraint, self-mastery, regard
for the rights of others; we must show our abhorrence of
cruelty, brutality, and corruption, in public and private life
alike.

If we come short in any of these qualities we shall measurably