THE FREE SCHOOL. SPEECH AT TEACHERS' CONVENTION, JULY 4, 1910. I am not an educator; I may not even be educated in any highly technical sense; yet in my official capacity I represent education as completely as any teacher in this gathering. The office which I have the honor to fill could not exist except among an intelligent and educated people. Education of the people implies government by the people. That is why tyrants have everywhere dreaded the free school, and why the free schoolhouse occupies a place in our affections second only to the charter of liberty itself. Upon its powerful influence we rely to prevent the return of tyranny and to maintain a just equilibrium in the state. This circumstance, I think, explains why Boston has so often taken the lead in the field which you cultivate. If you pay a visit to Dorchester you will find there a tablet marking the site of one of the first free schools in America. Our city has also been the cradle of those ideas of self-government which are now accepted by a great part of the civilized world. Long before the Revolution our Puritan colonists had resented the royal yoke. During the last hundred years we have inaugurated more than one movement for the emancipation of men. Most of our great educators Franklin, Quincy, Horace Mann, Walker, Eliot, Lowell have taken an active interest in government in one or another of its phases. In a word, the ideals of democracy and popular education are so interwoven here that any conception except that of a free people, schooling all its children free, would be utterly foreign to our way of thinking. The fruits of this temper you may have witnessed in the early days of your pilgrimage among us. You have doubtless seen schools of every description, public and private, ranging from kindergarten to university. Their numbers and external appearances are impressive. Their enrollment includes every child up to the threshold of manhood and womanhood. Their teaching staff contains the flower of our population. Their courses of study are elastic and progressive, growing with the needs of the times, but never really departing from basic principles which have stood the test of experience. Their support is so generous that the cost of the public school system alone this year amounts to over six and a half millions, and constitutes the largest single item of our city budget. You come, then, teachers of America, to a city predisposed in your favor and deeply interested in your labors. Your deliberations will be followed with eager sympathy, tempered and governed by critical understanding. Your calling is honored here as in few other communities. It is my privilege and my pleasure to speak for six hundred and fifty thousand citizens of Boston who, differ as they may on other subjects, are unanimous to-day in welcoming you to the warmest hospitality of this city. THE FINANCE COMMISSION. The communication from the Finance Commission does not seem worth much more than a passing comment. It is not such a judicial criticism as the law requires and the people expect from the Finance Commission. It is not a criticism. It is a political assault by men who have before charged me with the worst of crimes and who were but temporarily silenced by the verdict of the people at the last election. The gentlemen who comprise this commission are the appointees of a Republican Governor who is entering upon a doubtful political campaign, and this commission is only another device of Republican state machine politicians to harass and torture self-government in Boston. The belief is prevalent among this class of politicians that it is of advantage to them to poison the minds of the citizens of the state with the notion that Boston is the worst governed city in the world. They heap upon Boston unjust burdens of taxation and unjust abuse in order that they may hold the state through the prejudice thus incited against the commercial heart of the commonwealth and the party which ordinarily controls it. It is because this attack of the Finance Commission is not made in good faith but for political purposes that I shall not permit myself to be drawn into a wrangle of which it is designed to be only the beginning. The citizens of Boston may feel assured that, whenever the Finance Commission or any other body of citizens makes any charge against me which ought to be denied or explained, both my sense of the right of my fellowcitizens to know the facts and my own sense of selfinterest will require that I answer it. But I shall not be drawn into squabbles with men whose real object is not what it appears. When the Republican state politicians want to exercise their ventriloquial powers they must do it at the expense of someone other than myself. The gentlemen of the Finance Commission sit on the knees of these men and seem to speak for themselves. But I have been behind the scenes and I know whence the voices come. Before I drop the subject I want to make just one observation. The Mayor is responsible by law for the conduct of the departments. He is the chief executive officer, "and, as such executive officer, it shall be his duty to secure the honest, efficient and economical conduct of the entire executive and administrative business of the city and the harmonious and concerted actiou of the different departments." I have accepted the responsibility imposed upon the Mayor by the law and no man ever yet secured "harmonious and concerted action" in great departments filled with men who disliked him or had no faith in his capacity to administer the business of the city well. Whenever I find that, in the interest of the city, a loyal man who has faith in me is needed in the city government anywhere, I shall appoint such a man if he is otherwise competent. I came into office after the city had been convulsed by the most violent campaign it had ever known, and after a princely fortune had been spent to disseminate just such caviling attacks as this upon me, and now I am accused of having changed less than a dozen officials in the largest corporation in New England! Those who are the head even of little corporations must smile as they read of this serious offence. Does anybody think that such a cavil is worth an answer? MAINE'S OPPORTUNITY. SPEECH AT LEWISTON, MAINE, SEPTEMBER 10, 1910. The battle between the money power and the people, which has been imminent for many years, is about to be fought to a finish. It is idle to obscure the issue. The revelations of the past decennial have shown American people that it is the men who control our financial institutions and the big business enterprises who menace the freedom and prosperity of the country. For more than a quarter of a century they succeeded in fooling the American people, but now the searchlight has been turned on and it has exposed such rottenness in American finances as to startle the world. For years we have been told that the extraordinarily high duties imposed by Republican Congresses were necessary for the protection of American labor. Too many people believed these statements, made by the agents of greedy monopolists, with the result that we have raised a tremendous crop of millionaires and of misery. We have been misled day in and day out for fifteen years by men who, meeting together around a small table in the great city of New York, created fictitious values at the expense of the American people and demanded, as a right, the toil of millions to pay those unjustifiable dividends. The railroads of the country, which are capitalized for eighteen billion dollars, represent in actual value nine billion. In other words, nine billion of fictitious capitalization has been distributed among a few personal favorites, and ninety million of American people taxed to pay the dividends. Six per cent, the average rate paid upon the American railroad, means a tax of $540,000,000 a year which the American people are compelled to pay over and above the just requirements. Our big United States Steel Trust, |