who rose out of the ranks and interpreted America better than any man had
interpreted it who had risen out of the privileged classes or the educated
classes of America?

The hope of the United States in the present and in the future is the same
that it has always been: it is the hope and confidence that out of unknown
homes will come men who will constitute themselves the masters of industry
and of politics. The average hopefulness, the average welfare, the average
enterprise, the average initiative, of the United States are the only
things that make it rich. We are not rich because a few gentlemen direct
our industry; we are rich because of our own intelligence and our own
industry. America does not consist of men who get their names into the
newspapers; America does not consist politically of the men who set
themselves up to be political leaders; she does not consist of the men who
do most of her talking,--they are important only so far as they speak for
that great voiceless multitude of men who constitute the great body and
the saving force of the nation. Nobody who cannot speak the common
thought, who does not move by the common impulse, is the man to speak for
America, or for any of her future purposes. Only he is fit to speak who
knows the thoughts of the great body of citizens, the men who go about
their business every day, the men who toil from morning till night, the
men who go home tired in the evenings, the men who are carrying on the
things we are so proud of.

You know how it thrills our blood sometimes to think how all the nations
of the earth wait to see what America is going to do with her power, her
physical power, her enormous resources, her enormous wealth. The nations
hold their breath to see what this young country will do with her young
unspoiled strength; we cannot help but be proud that we are strong. But
what has made us strong? The toil of millions of men, the toil of men who
do not boast, who are inconspicuous, but who live their lives humbly from
day to day; it is the great body of toilers that constitutes the might of
America. It is one of the glories of our land that nobody is able to
predict from what family, from what region, from what race, even, the
leaders of the country are going to come. The great leaders of this
country have not come very often from the established, "successful"
families.

I remember speaking at a school not long ago where I understood that
almost all the young m