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 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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 DPV 
 
 1 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 AT THE 
 
 CELEBRATION OF THE SEMICENTENNIAL 
 
 OF THE FOUNDING OF THE CITY OF 
 
 BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA 
 
 OCTOBER 26, 1921 
 
 2-1-2- 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 1921 
 
3 34 
 
 •IB (o u 4> 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 IJVtQ 
 
 novmimi 
 
 OOOUMENT* wi.wlilON 
 
ADDRESS AT BIRMINGHAM, OCTOBER 26, 1921. 
 
 Mr. Mayor, Citizens of Birmingham, and People of the South : 
 I have been wondering, as we have seen the Birmingham district and 
 the marvels of this region's industrial development, whether any of 
 us have yet quite realized the significance of the fact that Birming- 
 ham has been called "The Magic City." The basic, characteristic 
 industry on which modern civilization rests is iron and steel; and 
 Birmingham is the world's last word in development of the iron and 
 steel industries. 
 
 We have come here to pay tribute to the marvelous achievement of 
 a brief half century to which this city and its industries stand as a 
 monument. They testify to us how far the South has progressed in 
 a single generation: the generation since slavery was abolished and 
 the rule of free labor and unfettered industrial opportunity be- 
 came the rule of all of our great Republic. 
 
 Somewhere my attention has been called to the legend, possibly a 
 historical fact, that when Fernando De Soto was leading his expedi- 
 tion of exploration and conquest from Florida to the Mississippi, 
 some of his metal workers not only discovered the wonderful deposits 
 of coal, limestone, and iron ore in this area and told De Soto that here 
 was an even greater treasure house than that which he was seeking; 
 not an El Dorado of precious metals^, but the opportunity for making 
 the world's dominating iron industry. I have been told, I do not 
 know whether it is literally true, that the first reduction of iron in 
 this district was actually accomplished by members of the De Soto 
 party who supplied certain of the expedition's needs by smelting 
 some of these wonderful ores. But De Soto was led on b} T the mirage 
 which filled his vision, and instead of the pot of gold he sought, he 
 found the miglnVy Mississippi, and in it his grave. 
 
 So far as concerns more modern development, it appears that Gen- 
 eral Andrew Jackson also utilized your mineral and metal riches. 
 When he was on his march to New Orleans for the great battle in 
 which the yeomanry of the South won the single notable land victory 
 of the War of 1812, his metallurgists discovered that from these easily 
 smelted ores they could supply their requirements of iron, of which 
 they stood in great need. Accordingly, they erected rude furnaces 
 and reduced considerable quantities of iron. From that time on there 
 
 72964—21 (3) 
 
appears to have been more or less .sporadic and intermittent utiliza- 
 tion of these d( and during the Civil War they provided a 
 iderable part of the needs of the South. 
 In this connection I have many times wished that there might 
 be a wider appreciation of the en,ei . ami genius 
 for industrial developmient whlen the people of the South demon- 
 strated during that war. Essentially an aristocratic agricultural 
 region, the South suddenly confronted the need to turn out iron and 
 !. and a vast complexity of their products which were absolutely 
 ntial to the conduct of the War. Not only did they arise to the 
 occasion, but they gave what 1 have regarded as one of the greatest 
 demonstrations in all history of the possibilities of adaptation, or- 
 <>n. and industrial development under stress of great neces- 
 sity. We will do well to recognize that the industrial achievement 
 of the South during the Civil War was one of the marvels resulting 
 from that unhappy conflict It marked the beginning of that diversi- 
 fication of industry which has made the South of to-day an indus- 
 trial as well as an agricultural empire; I have often wished that 
 some inspired son of the South might one day devote the time and 
 etl.,1! necessary t<» record the history of that Aladdin-like industrial 
 wonder which was a large part of the story of the S«.uth in the civil 
 contest. It is one of the phases of American history that has had too 
 little understanding attention. When we have studied the Civil War 
 we have beefi so engrossed with military and political aspects that 
 we have slighted the industrial and economic phases. 1 am going 
 to venture, therefore, the suggestion that a comprehensive study of 
 that afipeol of the war period would be of inestimahle value to the 
 South and to the great story of our national progress. Not only 
 would it constitute an eloquent testimony to the genius and devotion 
 of our southern people, hut it would present a picture of opening 
 
 Opportunity and widening horizon whose Contemplation would chal- 
 lenge every remaining vestige ..f prejudice and sectional antagonism, 
 It has bees l truism that the War between the States started the 
 Nation :is a whole in its way of colossal industrial growth. But I 
 have wished that the particular story of that war-lame experience in 
 the South might he hetter known. I have been told of tin- almost 
 overnight development of Munition factories out of smithies; of the 
 expansion of railroad repair shops int.. locomotive works; how ship- 
 yards, ordnance plants, powder factories were conjured up and put 
 :it work almost in the twinkling of :m eye: of improvised industrial 
 processes and mechanical contrivances, not a few of which have been 
 
 of permanent value, some of them fairly revolutionary. We will. 
 I am BUre, he forgiven if. as Americans, we remind ourselves that 
 wooden navies hail fought each other for thousands of years until 
 Americans fell to lighting among themselves. Then came iron 
 
fighting craft — came so quickly and unanimously that both sides had 
 their first armored warships read} 7 at the same moment, so well 
 matched that they fought to a draw. It was a revolution ; yet it was 
 only one incident in this matching of American genius and resource- 
 fulness in titantic struggle. 
 
 The railway and the telegraph were first bidden to the service of 
 war on a great scale during our civil contest. The huge ordnance 
 which both North and South created and used was as sensational in 
 that day as the most startling constructions of the World War were 
 more than a generation later. In both South and North our people 
 learned and demonstrated what it means to mobilize all the human, 
 industrial, financial, scientific resources of a great community for the 
 purposes of war. That, indeed, was the most characteristic and most 
 revolutionary development of the struggle. When we had done with 
 our war we had well-nigh made over the whole art of war. The old 
 things were gone forever. By land or by sea both its material and 
 its methods were sweepingly changed. Glory and glamour had been 
 taken out of it and in their place had been put the grim, hard reality 
 of whole peoples measuring against each other their last ounce of 
 power and resources. 
 
 In that contest of industry and resources the South started with a 
 fearful handicap; a handicap so great that its accomplishments con- 
 stituted one of the industrial wonders of all time. It is to this wonder 
 that I have wanted to call attention to-day, for I have felt that it has 
 never been appraised as it ought to be. From that contest the South 
 emerged, not only with the foundation of industrial greatness securely 
 laid but freed from the incubus of a labor system that had from 
 colonial times chained it to the status of an almost purely agricul- 
 tural community. 
 
 The industrial and commercial development of States and peoples 
 has alwaj 7 s been strikingly influenced by their wars; perhaps even 
 more than their social and political development. That older war 
 founded industry in the South under stress of sternest necessity; 
 and so we may recognize in j^our Birmingham district and its indus- 
 trial splendor one of the fine products of the industrial revolution 
 which was forced upon the whole South. 
 
 We are gathered to-day to celebrate the semicentenary of the found- 
 ing of Birmingham. That this wonder could be wrought in so brief 
 a time tells us how fast our modern world moves; so fast that we are 
 wont to forget our yesterdays before our to-days are fairly begun; 
 so absorbing in its concerns of the present that too often we have 
 neither time nor interest for the morrow. Yet there never was a 
 time when we needed so much to study our past and, in the light of its 
 ]<>>-< >n<. give earnest thought to the to-morrows. So I have thought 
 that here in your Aiagic City, whose story seems a very compress of 
 
yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, it may be proper to suggest a few 
 thoughts regarding the critical times which are faced by our country 
 and all countries and some of the issues which command our con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Exhausted an.) affrighted by the horrors of the World War. the 
 cations are seeking means t<> prevent repetition of such an experi- 
 ence. They see the need for effective reform in international rela- 
 tionship- and. along with this, for many alterations and adaptations 
 of domestic institutions which will Letter tit them for the new time. 
 Our own country, though its necessities are less onerous, its diffi- 
 culties not bo grievous a-- those of many others, lias yet occasion to 
 consider wherein it may better its methods, adjust itself to the new 
 relationship.-, and equip itself for the new sort of struggle that lies 
 ahead. Concerning one phase of this national problem, T want to 
 
 sa\ a few word-. 
 
 If the Civil War marked the beginnings of industrialism in a 
 South which had previously been almost entirely agricultural, the 
 World War brought us to full recognition that the race problem is 
 national rather than merely BectionaL There are no authentic sta- 
 tistics, hut it i- common knowledge that the World War was marked 
 by a great migration of colored people to the North and West. They 
 were attracted by the demand for labor and the higher wages 
 offered. The slow movement had been in progress for decades be- 
 fore, but it was vastly accelerated 1 ause of the war. and has con- 
 tinued at only a slackened pace since. It has brought the question 
 of iace closer to North and West, and I believe it has served to 
 modify somewhat the news of those sections on this question. It 
 has made the South realize its industrial dependence on the labor 
 of the black man and made the North realize the difficulties of the 
 community in which two greatly differing races are brought to live 
 side by side. I should say that it has been responsible for a larger 
 charity <>n both sides, a beginning of better understanding; and in 
 the light of that better understanding perhaps we shall be able to 
 consider this problem together as a problem of all sections and of 
 both races, in whose solution the best intelligence of both must be 
 enlisted. 
 
 Indeed, wc will be wise to recognize it as wider yet. Whoever 
 will take the time to read and ponder Mr. Lothrop Stoddard's book on 
 The Rising Tide of Color, or. say. the thoughtful review of some 
 recent literature of this question which Mr. F. D. Lugard presented 
 in a recent Bdinburg Review, must realize that our race problem 
 here in the Tinted Slates is only a phase of a race issue that the 
 whole world confronts. Surely we shall gain nothing by blinking 
 the fact-, by refusing to give thought to them. That is not the 
 American way of approaching such i-^ues. 
 
In another way the World War modified the elements of this 
 problem. Thousands of black men, serving their qountry just as 
 patriotically as did the white men, were transported overseas and 
 experienced the life of countries where their color aroused less of 
 antagonism than it does here. Many of them aspire to go to Europe 
 to live. 
 
 A high-grade colored soldier told me that the Avar brought his race 
 the first real conception of citizenship — the first full realization that 
 the flag was their flag, to fight for, to be protected by them, and 
 also to protect them. He was sure that the opportunity to learn 
 what patriotism meant was a real opportunity to his race. 
 
 These things lead one to hope that we shall find an adjustment of 
 relations between the two races, in which both can enjoy full citizen- 
 ship, the full measure of usefulness to the country and of opportu- 
 nity for themselves, and in which recognition and reward shall at 
 last be distributed in proportion to individual deserts, regardless 
 of race or color. Mr. Lugard, in his recent essay, after surveying 
 the world's problem of races, concludes thus : 
 
 " Here then is the true conception of the interrelation of color — 
 complete uniformity in ideals, absolute equality in the paths of knowl- 
 edge and culture, equal opportunity for those who strive, equal 
 admiration for those who achieve; in matters social and racial a 
 separate path, each pursuing his own inherited traditions, preserv- 
 ing his own race purity and race pride ; equality in things spiritual ; 
 agreed divergence in the physical and material." 
 
 Here, it has seemed to me, is suggestion of the true way out. Politi- 
 cally and economically there need be no occasion for great and 
 permanent differentiation, for limitations of the individual's oppor- 
 tunity, provided that on both sides there shall be recognition of the 
 absolute divergence in things social and racial. When I suggest the 
 possibility of economic equality between the races, I mean it in pre- 
 cisely the same way and to the same extent that I would mean it if 
 I spoke of equality of economic opportunity as between members of 
 the same race. In each case I would mean equality proportioned 
 to the honest capacities and deserts of the individual. 
 
 Men of both races may well stand uncompromisingly against every 
 suggestion of social equality. Indeed, it would be helpful to have 
 that word " equality " eliminated from this consideration ; to have it 
 accepted on both sides that this is not a question of social equality, 
 but a question of recognizing a fundamental, eternal, and inescapable 
 difference. We shall have made real progress when we develop an 
 attitude in the public and community thought of both races which 
 recognizes this difference. 
 
 Colonizing countries everywhere have in recent times been more 
 and more dealing with the problem from this point of view. The 
 
8 
 
 British commonwealth of nations and races confronts it, and has 
 been seeking its solution along the lines here suggested. There is 
 possibility of our learning something applicable to our own country 
 from the British. It is true that there is a great difference between 
 bringing into bur own land the colonists of another race and going 
 out to another land and subjecting it and its people to the rule of 
 an alien race. Yet the two cases have so many elements of similarity 
 that it seems to me the experience of each must furnish some light 
 upon the other. 
 
 Take first the political aspect. T would say let the black man vote 
 when he is fit to vote: prohibit the white man fOting when he i- 
 unfit to vote. Especially WOuld I appeal to the se] i'-rcspeet of the 
 colored race. 1 would inculcate in it the wish to improve itself : 
 distinct nice, with a heredity, a ^et of traditions, an array of aspira- 
 tions all its own. Out of such racial ambition- and pride will come 
 natural segregations, without narrowing any rights, Mich, as are pro- 
 ceeding in both rural and urban communities now in Southern States, 
 satisfying natural inclinations and adding notably to happiness and 
 contentment. 
 
 On the other hand I would insist upon e<|tial educational oppor- 
 tunitv for both. This does not mean that both would become equally 
 educated within a generation <>r two generations or ten generations. 
 Even men of the sum' race do not accomplish such an equality as 
 that. They never will. The Providence that endowed men with 
 widely unequal capacities and capabilities and energies did not intend 
 any such thing-. 
 
 But there must be such education among the colored people as will 
 enable them to develop their own leaders, capable of understanding 
 and sympathi/im: with such a differentiation between the races a£ 
 1 have suggested — Leaders who will inspire tic rtMie with proper 
 ideals of race pride, of hat ional pride, of an honorable d< -t inv. an im- 
 portant participation in the universal effort for ad\ an.vment of hu- 
 manity as a whole. Racial amalgamation there can not be. Partner- 
 ship of the races in developing the highest aims of all humanity there 
 must be if humanity, not Only hen- but everywhere. is to achieve the 
 ends which we ha\ e -ct for it. 
 
 I can say to you people of the South, both white and black, that 
 the time has parsed when you are entitled to assume that this problem 
 
 of races is peculiarly and particularly your problem. More And 
 
 more it is becoming a problein of the North: more and more it is 
 the problem of Africa, Of South America, of the PacifiCj of the 
 
 South SeaS, of the world. It is the problem Of democracy every- 
 where, if we mean the thing- we say about democracy as the ideal 
 political state. 
 
9 
 
 Coming as Americans do from many origins of race, tradition. 
 language, color, institutions, heredity; engaged as we are in the 
 huge effort to work an honorable national destiny from so many 
 different elements; the one tiling we must sedulously avoid is the 
 development of group and class organizations in this country. 
 There has been time when we heard too much about the labor vote, 
 the business vote, the Irish vote, the Scandinavian vote, the Italian 
 vote, and so on. But the demagogues who would array class against 
 class and group against group have fortunately found little to 
 reward their efforts. That is because, despite the demagogues, the 
 idea of our oneness as Americans has risen superior to every ap- 
 peal to mere class and group. And so I would wish it might be 
 in this matter of our national problem of races. I would accent 
 that a black man can not be a white man, and that he does not need 
 and should not aspire to be as much like a white man as possible 
 in order to accomplish the best that is possible for him. He should 
 seek to be. and he should be encouraged to be, the best possible black 
 man, and not the best possible imitation of a white man. 
 
 It is a matter of the keenest national concern that the South shall 
 not be encouraged to make its colored population a vast reservoir of 
 ignorance, to be drained away by the processes of migration into all 
 other sections. That is what has been going on in recent years at a 
 rate so accentuated that it has caused this question of races to be, as 
 I have already said, no longer one of a particular section. Just as I 
 do not wish the South to be politically entirely of one party; just as 
 I believe that is bad for the South,- and for the rest of the country as 
 well, so I do not want the colored people to be entirely of one party. 
 I wish that both the tradition of a solidly Democratic South and the 
 tradition of a solidly Eepublican black race might be broken up. 
 Neither political sectionalism nor any system of rigid groupings of 
 the people will in the long run prosper our country. I want to see 
 the time come when black men will regard themselves as full partici- 
 pants in the benefits and duties of American citizenship ; when they 
 will vote for Democratic candidates, if they prefer the Democratic 
 policy on tariff or taxation, or foreign relations, or what-not; and 
 when they will vote the Republican ticket only for like reasons. We 
 can not go on, as we have gone for more than a half century, with one 
 great section of our population, numbering as many people as the 
 entire population of some significant countries of Europe, set off from 
 real contribution to solving our national issues, because of a division 
 on race lines. 
 
 With such convictions one must urge the people of the South to 
 take advantage of their superior understanding of this problem and 
 
10 
 
 to assume an attitude toward it that will deserve the confidence of 
 the colored people. Likewise, I plead with my own political party 
 to lay aside every program that looks to lining up the black man as 
 a mere political adjunct. Let there be an end of prejudice and of 
 demagogy in this line. Let the South understand the menace which 
 lies in forcing upon the black race an attitude of political solidarity. 
 The greater hope, the dissipation of hatred, the discouragement of 
 dangerous passions lie in persuading the black people to forget old 
 prejudices and to have them believe that, under the rule of whatever 
 political party, they would be treated just as other people are treated, 
 guaranteed all the rights that people of other colors enjoy, and 
 made, in short, to regard themselves as citizens of a country and not 
 of a particular race. 
 
 Every consideration, it seems to me, brings us back at last to the 
 question of education. When I speak of education as a part of this 
 race question. I do not want the States or the Nation to attempt to 
 educate people, whether white or black, into something they are not 
 fitted to be. I have no sympathy with the half-baked altruism that 
 would overstock us with doctors and lawyers, of whatever color, and 
 leave us in need of people fit and willing to do the manual work of 
 a workaday world. But I would like to see an education that would 
 fit every man not only to do his particular work as well as possible 
 but to rise to a higher plane if he would deserve it. For that sort 
 of education I have no fears, whether it be given to a black man or a 
 white man. From that sort of education. I believe, black men. white 
 men, the whole Nation, would draw immeasurable benefit. 
 
 It is probable that as a nation we have come to the end of the 
 period of very rapid increase in our population. Recent legislation 
 to restrict immigration will lie in pari responsible for a slacking 
 ratio of increase. The new immigrants have multiplied in numbers 
 much the more rapidly, but as the immigrants become Americanized, 
 amalgamated into the citizenry, the tendency has been toward less 
 rapid multiplication. So restricted immigration will reduce the 
 rate of increase, and force us back upon our older population to 
 find people to do the simpler, physically harder, manual tasks. This 
 will require some difficult readjustments. It has been easy, indeed. 
 but it has not been good for the people of our older stock, that a 
 constant inflow in immigration made it possible to crowd off these 
 less attractive and profitable tasks upon the newcomers. T don't 
 think it has been good for what the old Latins called the national 
 virtue. That is a word 1 have always liked, employed in the Roman 
 sense. T wish we might have adopted it into our Vocabulary, in this 
 sense. It strikes me as a good deal better than mdrdle. Anyhow. 
 
11 
 
 we are under necessity to raise honest, hard, manual work to a new 
 dignity if we are to get it done. We will have to make its compen- 
 sations more generous, materially, and, if I may say it, spiritually; 
 to make usefulness of service, rather than spotlessness of hands, the 
 test of whatever social recognition depends on the individual's occu- 
 pation. I confess a large disgust with all such classifications, and I 
 earnestly bespeak an attitude toward good, honorable, hard work 
 that will end them. I do not want to coddle and patronize labor ; I 
 want us all to get out, put on blue denims, roll up our sleeves, let 
 our hands be honorably soiled, and do the work. That's what we've 
 got to do, if we are to get on. We must do it, and be glad we can ; 
 for there is small chance that we will ever again have such armies of 
 laborers landing on these shores, as have come in the past. 
 
 In anticipation of such a condition the South may well recognize 
 that North and West are likely to continue their drafts upon its 
 colored population, and that if the South wishes to keep its fields 
 producing and its industry still expanding it will have to compete 
 for the services of the colored man. If it will realize its need for 
 him and deal quite fairly with him, the South will be able to keep 
 him in such numbers as your activities make desirable. At any rate, 
 here is a problem and it is pressing for settlement. 
 
 Is it not possible, then, that in the long era of readjustment upon 
 which we are entering for the Nation to lay aside old prejudices 
 and old antagonisms and in the broad, clear light of nationalism 
 enter upon a constructive policy in dealing with these intricate issues? 
 Just as we shall prove ourselves capable of doing this Ave shall insure 
 the industrial progress, the agricultural security, the social and 
 political safety of our whole country regardless of race or sections 
 and along the line of ideals superior to every consideration of groups 
 or class, of race or color or section or prejudice. 
 
 Here are the reflexes of magical industrial development, here are 
 the fruits in the making of a nation and its commitment to free 
 productivity and trade. There is a materialism which sometimes 
 seems sordid, but on the material foundation we have expanded in 
 soul, and we have seen this Republic the example to freedom aspir- 
 ing throughout the world. We wish to cling to all that is good. We 
 want to preserve the inheritance over which we fought because our 
 conflict made it more precious. But we wish to go on as well as 
 preserve. 
 
 The march of a great people is not a blind one. We can not be 
 unmindful of human advancement. We wish to be more than 
 apace with progress — we wish our America leading and choosing 
 safe paths. Fifty years is a narrow span. Yet the marvel of 
 
12 
 
 Birmingham is less than the marV< stounding Angelica. 
 
 And avc mean to go on. If we are just and honest in administering 
 justice, H we are alive to perils and meet them in conscience and 
 courage, the achievement of your first half century will be magnified 
 tenfold in the second half, and the glory of your city and your* 
 country will be reflected in the hap] _ :—it people, greater 
 
 than we dream, and grander for understanding and the courage to 
 be right. 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 497 572 8