Chapter 13
The domestic postal service continues to grow with extraordinary rapidity. The expenditures and the revenues will each exceed $100,000,000 during the current year. Fortunately, since the revival of prosperous times the revenues have grown much faster than the expenditures, and there is every indication that a short period will witness the obliteration of the annual deficit. In this connection the report of the Postmaster-General embodies a statement of some evils which have grown up outside of the contemplation of law in the treatment of some classes of mail matter which wrongly exercise the privilege of the pound rate, and shows that if this matter had been properly classified and had paid the rate which it should have paid, instead of a postal deficit for the last fiscal year of $6,610,000, there would have been on one basis a surplus of $17,637,570, and on another Of $5,733,836. The reform thus suggested, in the opinion of the Postmaster-General, would not only put the postal service at once on a self-sustaining basis, but would permit great and valuable improvements, and I commend the subject to the consideration of the Congress.
The Navy has maintained the spirit and high efficiency which have always characterized that service, and has lost none of the gallantry in heroic action which has signalized its brilliant and glorious past. The Nation has equal pride in its early and later achievements. Its habitual readiness for every emergency has won the confidence and admiration of the country. The people are interested in the continued preparation and prestige of the Navy and will justify liberal appropriations for its maintenance and improvement. The officers have shown peculiar adaptation for the performance of new and delicate duties which our recent war has imposed.
It cannot be doubted that Congress will at once make necessary provision for the armor plate for the vessels now under contract and building. Its attention is respectfully called to the report of the Secretary of the Navy, in which the subject is fully presented. I unite in his recommendation that the Congress enact such special legislation as may be necessary to enable the Department to make contracts early in the coming year for armor of the best quality that can be obtained in this country for the Maine, Ohio, and Missouri, and that the provision of the act of March 3, 1899, limiting the price of armor to $300 per ton be removed.
In the matter of naval construction Italy and Japan, of the great powers, laid down less tonnage in the year 1899 than this country, and Italy alone has less tonnage under construction. I heartily concur in the recommendations for the increase of the Navy, as suggested by the Secretary.
Our future progress and prosperity depend upon our ability to equal, if not surpass, other nations in the enlargement and advance of science, industry, and commerce. To invention we must turn as one of the most powerful aids to the accomplishment of such a result. The attention of the Congress is directed to the report of the Commissioner of Patents, in which will be found valuable suggestions and recommendations.
On the 30th of June, 1899, the pension roll of the United States numbered 991,519. These include the pensioners of the Army and Navy in all our wars. The number added to the rolls during the year was 40,991. The number dropped by reason of death, remarriage, minors by legal limitation, failure to claim within three years, and other causes, was 43, 186, and the number of claims disallowed was 107,919. During the year 89,054 pension certificates were issued, of which 37,077 were for new or original pensions. The amount disbursed for army and navy pensions during the year was $138,355,052.95, which was $1,651,461.61 less than the sum of the appropriations.
The Grand Army of the Republic at its recent national encampment held in Philadelphia has brought to my attention and to that of the Congress the wisdom and justice of a modification of the third section of the act of June 27, 1890, which provides pensions for the widows of officers and enlisted men who served ninety days or more during the War of the Rebellion and were honorably discharged, provided that such widows are without other means of sup, port than their daily labor and were married to the soldier, sailor, or marine on account of whose service they claim pension prior to the date of the act.
The present holding of the Department is that if the widow's income aside from her daily labor does not exceed in amount what her pension would be, to wit, $96 per annum, she would be deemed to be without other means of support than her daily labor, and would be entitled to a pension under this act; while if the widow's income independent of the amount received by her as the result of her daily labor exceeds $96, she would not be pensionable under the act. I am advised by the Commissioner of Pensions that the amount of the income allowed before title to pension would be barred has varied widely under different administrations of the Pension Office, as well as during different periods of the same administration, and has been the cause of just complaint and criticism.
With the approval of the Secretary of the Interior the Commissioner of Pensions recommends that, in order to make the practice at all times uniform and to do justice to the dependent widow, the amount of income allowed independent of the proceeds of her daily labor should be not less than $250 per annum, and he urges that the Congress shall so amend the act as to permit the Pension Office to grant pensionable status to widows under the terms of the third section of the act of June 27, 1890, whose income aside from the proceeds of daily labor is not in excess of $250 per annum. I believe this to be a simple act of justice and heartily recommend it.
The Dawes Commission reports that gratifying progress has been made in its work during the preceding year. The field-work of enrollment of four of the nations has been completed. I recommend that Congress at an early day make liberal appropriation for educational purposes in the Indian Territory.
In accordance with the act of Congress approved March 3, 1899. the preliminary work in connection with the Twelfth Census is now fully under way. The officers required for the proper administration of the duties imposed have been selected. The provision for securing a proper enumeration of the population, as well as to secure evidence of the industrial growth of the Nation, is broader and more comprehensive than any similar legislation in the past. The Director advises that every needful effort is being made to push this great work to completion in the time limited by the statute. It is believed that the Twelfth Census will emphasize our remarkable advance in all that pertains to national progress.
Under the authority of the act of Congress approved July 7, 1898, the commission consisting of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Attorney-General, and the Secretary of the Interior has made an agreement of settlement, which has had my approval, of the indebtedness to the Government growing out of the issue of bonds to aid in the construction of the Central Pacific and Western Pacific railroads. The agreement secures to the Government the principal and interest of said bonds, amounting to $58,812,715.48. There has been paid thereon $11,762,543.12, which has been covered into the Treasury, and the remainder, payable within ten years, with interest at the rate Of 3 per cent per annum, payable semiannually, is secured by the deposit of an equal amount of first-mortgage bonds of the Pacific Railway companies. The amounts paid and secured to be paid to the Government on account of the Pacific Railroad subsidy claims are: Union Pacific, cash - $58,448,223.75
Kansas Pacific, cash - 6,303,000.00
Central and Western Pacific, cash - 11,798,314.14
Notes, secured - 47,050,172.36
Kansas Pacific--dividends for deficiency due United States, cash - 821,897.70 -
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State of the Union Address William McKinley December 3, 1900
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
At the outgoing of the old and the incoming of the new century you begin the last session of the Fifty-sixth Congress with evidences on every hand of individual and national prosperity and with proof of the growing strength and increasing power for good of Republican institutions. Your countrymen will join with you in felicitation that American liberty is more firmly established than ever before, and that love for it and the determination to preserve it are more universal than at any former period of our history.
The Republic was never so strong, because never so strongly entrenched in the hearts of the people as now. The Constitution, with few amendments, exists as it left the hands of its authors. The additions which have been made to it proclaim larger freedom and more extended citizenship. Popular government has demonstrated in its one hundred and twenty-four years of trial here its stability and security, and its efficiency as the best instrument of national development and the best safeguard to human rights.
When the Sixth Congress assembled in November, 1800, the population of the United States was 5,308,483. It is now 76,304,799. Then we had sixteen States. Now we have forty-five. Then our territory consisted Of 909,050 square miles. It is now 3,846,595 square miles. Education, religion, and morality have kept pace with our advancement in other directions, and while extending its power the Government has adhered to its foundation principles and abated none of them in dealing with our new peoples and possessions. A nation so preserved and blessed gives reverent thanks to God and invokes His guidance and the continuance of His care and favor.
In our foreign intercourse the dominant question has been the treatment of the Chinese problem. Apart from this our relations with the powers have been happy.
The recent troubles in China spring from the antiforeign agitation which for the past three years has gained strength in the northern provinces. Their origin lies deep in the character of the Chinese races and in the traditions of their Government. The Taiping rebellion and the opening of Chinese ports to foreign trade and settlement disturbed alike the homogeneity and the seclusion of China.
Meanwhile foreign activity made itself felt in all quarters, not alone on the coast, but along the great river arteries and in the remoter districts, carrying new ideas and introducing new associations among a primitive people which had pursued for centuries a national policy of isolation.
The telegraph and the railway spreading over their land, the steamers plying on their waterways, the merchant and the missionary penetrating year by year farther to the interior, became to the Chinese mind types of an alien invasion, changing the course of their national life and fraught with vague forebodings of disaster to their beliefs and their self-control.
For several years before the present troubles all the resources of foreign diplomacy, backed by moral demonstrations of the physical force of fleets and arms, have been needed to secure due respect for the treaty rights of foreigners and to obtain satisfaction from the responsible authorities for the sporadic outrages upon the persons and property of unoffending sojourners, which from time to time occurred at widely separated points in the northern provinces, as in the case of the outbreaks in Sze-chuen and Shan-tung.
Posting of antiforeign placards became a daily occurrence, which the repeated reprobation of the Imperial power failed to check or punish. These inflammatory appeals to the ignorance and superstition of the masses, mendacious and absurd in their accusations and deeply hostile in their spirit, could not but work cumulative harm. They aimed at no particular class of foreigners; they were impartial in attacking everything foreign.
An outbreak in Shan-tung, in which German missionaries were slain, was the too natural result of these malevolent teachings.
The posting of seditious placards, exhorting to the utter destruction of foreigners and of every foreign thing, continued unrebuked. Hostile demonstrations toward the stranger gained strength by organization.
The sect, commonly styled the Boxers, developed greatly in the provinces north of the Yang-Tse, and with the collusion of many notable officials, including some in the immediate councils of the Throne itself, became alarmingly aggressive. No foreigner's life, outside of the protected treaty ports, was safe. No foreign interest was secure from spoliation.
The diplomatic representatives of the powers in Peking strove in vain to check this movement. Protest was followed by demand and demand by renewed protest, to be met with perfunctory edicts from the Palace and evasive and futile assurances from the Tsung-li Yamen. The circle of the Boxer influence narrowed about Peking, and while nominally stigmatized as seditious, it was felt that its spirit pervaded the capital itself, that the Imperial forces were imbued with its doctrines, and that the immediate counselors of the Empress Dowager were in full sympathy with the antiforeign movement.
The increasing gravity of the conditions in China and the imminence of peril to our own diversified interests in the Empire, as well as to those of all the other treaty governments, were soon appreciated by this Government, causing it profound solicitude. The United States from the earliest days of foreign intercourse with China had followed a policy of peace, omitting no occasions to testify good will, to further the extension of lawful trade, to respect the sovereignty of its Government, and to insure by all legitimate and kindly but earnest means the fullest measure of protection for the lives and property of our law-abiding citizens and for the exercise of their beneficent callings among the Chinese people.
Mindful of this, it was felt to be appropriate that our purposes should be pronounced in favor of such course as would hasten united action of the powers at Peking to promote the administrative reforms so greatly needed for strengthening the Imperial Government and maintaining the integrity of China, in which we believed the whole western world to be alike concerned. To these ends I caused to be addressed to the several powers occupying territory and maintaining spheres of influence in China the circular proposals of 1899, inviting from them declarations of their intentions and views as to the desirability of the adoption of measures insuring the benefits of equality of treatment of all foreign trade throughout China.
With gratifying unanimity the responses coincided in this common policy, enabling me to see in the successful termination of these negotiations proof of the friendly spirit which animates the various powers interested in the untrammeled development of commerce and industry in the Chinese Empire as a source of vast benefit to the whole commercial world.
In this conclusion, which I had the gratification to announce as a completed engagement to the interested powers on March 20, 1900, I hopefully discerned a potential factor for the abatement of the distrust of foreign purposes which for a year past had appeared to inspire the policy of the Imperial Government, and for the effective exertion by it of power and authority to quell the critical antiforeign movement in the northern provinces most immediately influenced by the Manchu sentiment.
Seeking to testify confidence in the willingness and ability of the Imperial administration to redress the wrongs and prevent the evils we suffered and feared, the marine guard, which had been sent to Peking in the autumn of 1899 for the protection of the legation, was withdrawn at the earliest practicable moment, and all pending questions were remitted, as far as we were concerned, to the ordinary resorts of diplomatic intercourse.
The Chinese Government proved, however, unable to check the rising strength of the Boxers and appeared to be a prey to internal dissensions. In the unequal contest the antiforeign influences soon gained the ascendancy under the leadership of Prince Tuan. Organized armies of Boxers, with which the Imperial forces affiliated, held the country between Peking and the coast, penetrated into Manchuria up to the Russian borders, and through their emissaries threatened a like rising throughout northern China.
Attacks upon foreigners, destruction of their property, and slaughter of native converts were reported from all sides. The Tsung-li Yamen, already permeated with hostile sympathies, could make no effective response to the appeals of the legations. At this critical juncture, in the early spring of this year, a proposal was made by the other powers that a combined fleet should be assembled in Chinese waters as a moral demonstration, under cover of which to exact of the Chinese Government respect for foreign treaty rights and the suppression of the Boxers.
The United States, while not participating in the joint demonstration, promptly sent from the Philippines all ships that could be spared for service on the Chinese coast. A small force of marines was landed at Taku and sent to Peking for the protection of the American legation. Other powers took similar action, until some four hundred men were assembled in the capital as legation guards.
Still the peril increased. The legations reported the development of the seditious movement in Peking and the need of increased provision for defense against it. While preparations were in progress for a larger expedition, to strengthen the legation guards and keep the railway open, an attempt of the foreign ships to make a landing at Taku was met by a fire from the Chinese forts. The forts were thereupon shelled by the foreign vessels, the American admiral taking no part in the attack, on the ground that we were not at war with China and that a hostile demonstration might consolidate the antiforeign elements and strengthen the Boxers to oppose the relieving column.
Two days later the Taku forts were captured after a sanguinary conflict. Severance of communication with Peking followed, and a combined force of additional guards, which was advancing to Peking by the Pei-Ho, was checked at Langfang. The isolation of the legations was complete.
The siege and the relief of the legations has passed into undying history. In all the stirring chapter which records the heroism of the devoted band, clinging to hope in the face of despair, and the undaunted spirit that led their relievers through battle and suffering to the goal, it is a memory of which my countrymen may be justly proud that the honor of our flag was maintained alike in the siege and the rescue, and that stout American hearts have again set high, in fervent emulation with true men of other race and language, the indomitable courage that ever strives for the cause of right and justice.
By June 19 the legations were cut off. An identical note from the, Yamen ordered each minister to leave Peking, under a promised escort, within twenty-four hours. To gain time they replied, asking prolongation of the time, which was afterwards granted, and requesting an interview with the Tsung-li Yamen on the following day. No reply being received, on the morning of the 20th the German minister, Baron von Ketteler, set out for the Yamen to obtain a response, and oil the way was murdered.
An attempt by the legation guard to recover his body was foiled by the Chinese. Armed forces turned out against the legations. Their quarters were surrounded and attacked. The mission compounds were abandoned, their inmates taking refuge in the British legation, where all the other legations and guards gathered for more effective defense. Four hundred persons were crowded in its narrow compass. Two thousand native converts were assembled in a nearby palace under protection of the foreigners. Lines of defense were strengthened, trenches dug, barricades raised, and preparations made to stand a siege, which at once began.
From June 20 until July 17, writes Minister Conger, "there was scarcely an hour during which there was not firing upon some part of our lines and into some of the legations, varying from a single shot to a general and continuous attack along the whole line." Artillery was placed around the legations and on the over-looking palace walls, and thousands Of 3-inch shot and shell were fired, destroying some buildings and damaging all. So thickly did the balls rain, that, when the ammunition of the besieged ran low, five quarts of Chinese bullets were gathered in an hour in one compound and recast.
Attempts were made to burn the legations by setting neighboring houses on fire, but the flames were successfully fought off, although the Austrian, Belgian, Italian. and Dutch legations were then and subsequently burned. With the aid of the native converts, directed by the missionaries, to whose helpful co-operation Mr. Conger awards unstinted praise, the British legation was made a veritable fortress. The British minister, Sir Claude MacDonald, was chosen general commander of the defense, with the secretary of the American legation, Mr. E. G. Squiers, as chief of staff.
To save life and ammunition the besieged sparingly returned the incessant fire of the Chinese soldiery, fighting only to repel attack or make an occasional successful sortie for strategic advantage, such as that of fifty-five American, British, and Russian marines led by Captain Myers, of the United States Marine Corps, which resulted in the capture of a formidable barricade on the wall that gravely menaced the American position. It was held to the last, and proved an invaluable acquisition, because commanding the water gate through which the relief column entered.
During the siege the defenders lost 65 killed, 135 wounded, and 7 by disease, the last all children.
On July 14 the besieged had their first communication with the Tsung-li Yamen, from whom a message came inviting to a conference, which was declined. Correspondence, however, ensued and a sort of armistice was agreed upon, which stopped the bombardment and lessened the rifle fire for a time. Even then no protection whatever was afforded, nor any aid given, save to send to the legations a small supply of fruit and three sacks of flour.
Indeed, the only communication had with the Chinese Government related to the occasional delivery or dispatch of a telegram or to the demands of the Tsung-li Yamen for the withdrawal of the legations to the coast under escort. Not only are the protestations of the Chinese Government that it protected and succored the legations positively contradicted, but irresistible proof accumulates that the attacks upon them were made by Imperial troops, regularly uniformed, armed, and officered, belonging to the command of Jung Lu, the Imperial commander in chief. Decrees encouraging the Boxers, organizing them tinder prominent Imperial officers, provisioning them, and even granting them large sums in the name of the Empress Dowager, are known to exist. Members of the Tsung-li Yamen who counseled protection of the foreigners were beheaded. Even in the distant provinces men suspected of foreign sympathy were put to death, prominent among these being Chang Yen-hoon, formerly Chinese minister in Washington.
With the negotiation of the partial armistice of July 14, a proceeding which was doubtless promoted by the representations of the Chinese envoy in Washington, the way was opened for the conveyance to Mr. Conger of a test message sent by the Secretary of State through the kind offices of Minister Wu Ting-fang. Mr. Conger's reply, dispatched from Peking on July 18 through the same channel, afforded to the outside world the first tidings that the inmates of the legations were still alive and hoping for succor.