The WAY to WOW Shows
Celebrate Labor Day
September 7, 2026
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[0:04] Work is sometimes described as something we endure so that we can enjoy the hours when we're not working. Perhaps that has it backwards. Work is a crucial way we participate in life. Who [music] are you and where are you going? What do you want?

[0:38] >> Hello and welcome to this special edition of the Way to Wow shows for Labor Day 2026. I'm your host Kevin Bemel and I do these special editions in order to recognize important times uh in the cycle of the year and today is in fact Labor Day and so uh hopefully you're flying your flag. I know mine is out and it's it is a time to I think contemplate at least a little while the

[1:13] nature and the value of labor. And so as is my custom on these shows I want to talk a little bit about an idea [snorts] and then I have a reading uh on on uh appropriate for the day. In this case, it's uh it's a speech called the strenuous life [snorts] um that uh Theodore Roosevelt gave before the Hamilton Club in Chicago on April 10th of 1899. So, but I before I I do that reading, I want to talk about this idea of work.

[1:50] Work seems to have gotten become almost like a dirty word in our society today. And and that's I think unfortunate uh because there are there most of what work is or should be for us is very positive that that we should you know lay around and and I don't know be fanned by huge palm frrons and you know eat bon bonss or or you know some sort of dissipating life like that is is a very negative thing

[2:28] for us as human beings. I do joke from time people say, "What do you want to do?" "Oh, I want to sit around and read and and eat ice cream." I mean, I I say that tongue and cheek. I I I I think after, you know, a couple of days of doing that, I would get incredibly bored, not to mention uh very very unhealthy. Uh work is a good thing. And uh so through work we first of all and we discover that we are capable of doing things that are difficult. So work

[3:03] should be challenging and I think that is part of the problem is work can be difficult [snorts] but if it's challenging that's good. when it's just difficult then it becomes too much to bear right so when when we learn so um we learn patience uh when we when an answer doesn't come easily we learn discipline when we would rather stop than keep going and we learn humility when someone else knows more than we do and we need their help even

[3:40] more so we have to ask them for help and those are all very good character traits on which we should all be working. So work also gives us something particularly important and that is a sense of achievement of accomplishment. So too often in our society um we're told we're told to value ourselves simply because we exist. Now [snorts] from a religious perspective,

[4:15] yes, of course, each human being has value as a human being. [snorts] Uh and and that should be the basis of our self-esteem and our self-respect. But if we're going to build on that foundation, achievement, accomplishment is the best way to do it because then we have the ability to take satisfaction in what we've done. So if we create something that didn't exist before or we

[4:52] solve a problem, okay, we're able to say, I did that. Now maybe I you know you didn't do it all on your own but you had a hand in creating whatever was built in solving whatever was solved and you can take satisfaction in having done that and it says something positive about you as a human being. So the the accomplishment it can be quite ordinary, it can be enormous. So

[5:30] you may have built a business, finish a difficult project or just, you know, repaired something broken around the house. You may have helped another person or just simply completed a day's work. Well, right? All of those are achievements and they give us evidence of our own ability. They build confidence and they encourage us to attempt the next difficult thing. Right? So, uh just um on Friday of of last

[6:05] week, I was in a pitch meeting with uh a young fellow who is starting a technology business and um along with an associate of mine, we had looked over his deck and we and we had she and I had discussed it and then we had this meeting and a lot of the things we said to him were I think were very Not not I think I know they were very difficult for him to hear. He said he said so at the end of the meeting. Um but he also thanked us for our cander and for taking

[6:40] the time two hours to talk with him about this. And I I wrapped up the meeting by saying to him what you're doing is difficult. That's part of the reason why it's worth doing and it's how you've earned my respect. Right? That is what work is about. That is what our labor is for. It's to create those kinds of situations. So, [snorts]

[7:15] um, almost every so and and and and the the point of that is our work hopefully connects us to other people whether they're colleagues, investors, potential investors, customers, clients, uh, government officials with whom we have to deal through our work. we have an opportunity to engage with other people and make our life more meaningful through those interactions,

[7:52] right? And so um almost everything we use, enjoy on which we depend exists because someone worked to provide it. the food on our tables, the buildings in which we live and work, the books we read, the the businesses uh we patronize. Okay? [snorts] All of these are started, run, created by other people, and it's their labor that has made them

[8:27] available to us. Yesterday I went to the farmers market like I do almost every Sunday. And one of the reasons I go there is sometimes I'm meeting the people who have actually grown the crops, the food that I'm going to eat, right? And minimally I'm meeting people who know those people because they were hired by them to man their booth at the farmers market. [snorts] And so I can be more directly connected to the people who labored to bring nourishment to

[9:04] those of us at the market. Right? So when we work, we become part of this exchange. We contribute something of our own and we get something back. So there is tremendous dignity in knowing that [snorts] somewhere someone is better off for the effort we made. That's part of the dignity of being a farmer. I'm feeding people.

[9:40] I part of the dignity of what I do is is talk about these things and hopefully give you food for thought, nourishment for your mind and soul. So here's the reality. Not every job is enjoyable. Not every task is meaningful, right? We need to do our best to imbue them with meaning, to make them enjoyable. Okay. But not all of it is. And so work should not consume our whole lives.

[10:18] We we need to have something worthwhile to do, opportunities to overcome challenges and accomplish things [snorts] so that we can take satisfaction knowing that our efforts have mattered in an important as an important part of a more broadly fulfilling life. Right. So this is the reason we celebrate Labor Day. It's not simply a celebration of jobs. It's a recognition of something more fundamental

[10:54] that through effort, skill, responsibility, achievement, and service. Each of us can leave a small part of the world better than we found it. So I'm going to read now this uh speech given by Theodore Roosevelt. Again it's called the strenuous life and it is it's not just about work and labor. It is about a life of activity. Okay. And again he it was it was uh

[11:30] given before the Hamilton Club in Chicago on the 10th of April in 1899. In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character. I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life

[12:05] of toil and effort, of labor and strife, to preach that highest form of success, which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from d shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these winds the splendid ultimate triumph, a life of slothful ease, a life that peace of of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things is as

[12:43] little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that whatever every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease that peace is to be the first consideration in their eyes to be the ultimate goal after which to strive. You men of Chicago have made this city great. You men of Illinois have of

[13:20] Illinois have made have done your share and more than your share in making America great because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work yourselves and you bring up your sons to work. If you are rich and worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness. For wisely used leisure means mere meerly means that those who possess it being free from the necessit necessity of

[13:55] working for their livelihood are all bound to carry on some kind of nonremunative rem remunerative work in science in letters in art and exploration and historical research work of this type we most need in this country. the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort. The man who never

[14:30] wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help be a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse to never have tried to succeed. In this life, we get nothing saved by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been some stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers

[15:07] before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used a right, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or as a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats that period of freedom from the actual from the need of actual labor as a period not a preparation not of a preparation but of mere enjoyment even though perhaps not of the vicious

[15:43] enjoyment he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if they need to do So if the need to do so should arise again. A mere life of ease is not the end of a very satis satisfactory life and above all it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.

[16:18] In the last analysis, a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up can lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives. When the children are so trained that they that they shall endeavor not to sherk difficulties, but to overcome them, not to seek ease, but to know how to rest, triumph from toil and risk. The the man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor, to keep himself and those dependent on him. The woman must be the housewife, the help meat of the

[16:54] homemaker, the wise and fearless mother of many healthy children. In one of Dod's powerful and melancholy books, he speaks of the fear of maternity, the haunting terror of the young wife of the present day. When such words can be truthfully written of a nation, that nation is rotten to the core heart's core. When men fear work or fear of righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom. And well it is they should vanish from the earth where they are fit

[17:30] subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and high-minded. As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation. It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor

[18:05] suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things and war and strife the worst of all things. And had they acted upon that belief, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. We would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, besides saving all the blood

[18:40] and treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented the heartbreak of many women, the dissolution of many homes, and we would have spared the country those months of doom and shame when it seemed as if our armies marched only to defeat. We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided it, we would have shown that we were weaklings, that we were unfit to stand among the great nations of the earth.

[19:17] Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln and bore the swords or rifles in the armies of Grant. Let us the children of the men who prove themselves equal to the mighty days. Let us the children of men who carried the great civil war to a triumphant conclusion praise the God of our fathers that the ignoble councils of peace were rejected. That the suffering and loss, the blackness of sorrow and despair were unflinchingly faced and the years of

[19:52] strife endured. For in the end, the slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty American republic placed once more as a helmeted queen among nations. We of this generation do not have to face a task such as that our fathers faced, but we have our tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform them. We cannot, if we would, play the part of China and be content to rot by inches in

[20:28] ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in scrambling commercialism, heedless of higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find beyond a shadow of question what China has already found. that in this world, the nation that has trained itself into a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound in the end to go down before other nations

[21:05] which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill. In 1898, we could not help being brought face to face with the problem of war with Spain. All we could decide was whether we

[21:40] should shrink like cowards from the contest or enter enter into it as besamed a brave and high-spirited people and once in whether failure or success shall crown our banners. So it is now. We cannot avoid the responsibilities that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. All we can decide is whether we shall meet them in a way that will redound to the national credit, of whether we shall make of our dealings

[22:15] with these new problems a dark and shameful page in our history. To refuse to deal with them at all merely amounts to dealing with them badly. We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is of course always danger that we may not solve it a right. But to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it a right.

[22:51] The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the over civilized man who has lost the great fighting, the masterful values, the ignorant man and the man of dull mind whose soul is incapable of feeling the mighty lift that thrills stern man with empires in their brains. All these of course shrink from seeing the nation undertake its new duties. shrink from seeing us build a navy and an army adequate to our needs. Shrink from seeing us do our share of the world's work by bringing order out of the chaos

[23:27] in the great fair tropic islands from which the valor of our soldiers and sailors has driven the Spanish flag. These are the men who fear the strenuous life, who fear the only national life which is really worth leading. They believe in that cloistered life which saps the hearty val virtues in a nation as it saps them in an individual. Or else they are wedded to the base spirit of grain and greed which recognizes commercialism to the beall

[24:03] and endall of national life. Instead of realizing that though an indispensable element, it is after all but one of the many elements that go to make up true national greatness. No country can long endure in its foundations. if its foundations are not laid deep in the material prosperity which comes from thrift from business energy and enterprise from hard unsparing efforts in the fields of industrial activity.

[24:38] But neither was any nation ever yet truly great if it relied upon material prosperity alone. All honor must be paid to the architects of our material prosperity, to the great captains of industry who have built our factories and our railroads, to the strong men who toil for wealth with brain or hand. For great is the na debt of the nation to these and their kind. [snorts] But our debt is yet greater to those men whose highest type is to be found in a

[25:14] statesman like Lincoln, a soldier like Grant. They showed by their lives that they recognized the law of work, the law of strife. They toiled to win a competence for themselves and those dependent upon them. But they recognized that they were yet other there were yet other and even loftier duties. duties to the nation and duties to the race. We cannot sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of wellto-do huers who care nothing for what happens beyond. Such a

[25:51] policy would defeat even its own end. For as the nations grow to have ever wider and wider interests and are brought into closer and closer contact, if we are to hold our own in the struggle for naval and commercial supremacy, we must build up our power with in without our own borders. We must build the Ismi Ismian canal and we must grasp the points of vantage which will enable us to have our say in the deciding destiny of the oceans of the east and the west.

[26:29] So much for the commercial side. From the standpoint of international honor, the argument is even stronger. The guns that thundered off Manila and Santiago left left us echoes of glory, but they also left us a legacy of duty. If we drove out a medieval tyranny only to make room for savage anarchy, we had better not begun the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that we have no duty to perform and can leave to

[27:05] their fates the islands we have conquered. Such a course would be a course of infamy. It would be followed at once by utter chaos and the wretched in the wretched islands themselves. Such some stronger, manlier power would have to step in and do the work. And we would have shown ourselves weaklings unable to carry to successful completion the labors that great and highminded high-spirited nations are eager to undertake. The work must be done. We cannot escape our responsibility.

[27:40] And if we are worth our salt, we shall be glad of the chance to do the work. glad of the chance to show ourselves equal to one of the great tasks set modern civilization. But let us not deceive ourselves as as to the importance of the task. Let us not be misled by the vain glory into underestimating the strain it will put on our powers. Above all, let us, as we value our own self-respect, face the responsibilities with proper seriousness, courage, and high resolve.

[28:18] We must demand the highest order of integrity and ability in our public men who are to grapple with these new problems. We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or the inability to rise to the level of new demands upon our strengths and our resources. Of course, we must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act. Especially should be we be aware of attacking men who are merely the

[28:54] occasions and not the causes of disaster. Let me illustrate what I mean by the army and the navy. If 20 years ago we had gone to war, we should have the navy as absolutely unprepared as the army. At that time, our ships could not have encountered with success the fleets of Spain any more than nowadays. We can put untrained soldiers, no matter how brave, who are armed with archaic blackpowder weapons against well- drilled regulars armed with the highest type of modern

[29:30] repeating rifle. But in the early 80s, the attention of the nation became directed to our naval deeds. Congress most wisely made a series of appropriations to build a new navy and under a succession of able and patriotic secretaries of both political parties. The Navy was gradually built up until its material became equal to its splendid personnel with the result that in the summer of 1898 it leaped to its proper place as one of the most brilliant and formidable navies in the

[30:05] entire world. We rightly pay all honor to the men controlling the Navy at the time it won these great deeds. Honor to Secretary Long and Admiral Dwey. To the captains who handled the ships in action, to the daring lieutenants who braved death in the smaller crafts craft, and to the heads of the bureaus at Washington who saw that the ships were so commanded, so armed, so equipped, so well engineed as to ensure the best results. But let us also keep ever in mind that

[30:43] all of this would not have availed if it had not been for the wisdom of the men who during the preceding 15 years had built up the Navy. Keep in mind the secretaries of the Navy during those years. Keep in mind the senators and congressmen who by their votes gave the money necessary to build and to armor the ships, to construct the great guns, and to train the crews. Remember also those who actually did build the ships, the armor and the guns. And remember the admirals and captains who battled who handled battleship, cruiser and torpedo boat on the high

[31:19] seas alone and in squadrons developing the seammanship, the gunnery and the power of acting together which their successors ultimately you utilize so gloriously at Manila and off Santiago. and gentlemen, remember the converse, too. Remember that justice has two sides. Be just to those who built up the Navy, and for the sake of the future of the country, keep in mind those who opposed its building up. Read the congressional record. Find out the

[31:55] senators and congressmen who opposed the grants for building the new ships, who opposed the purchase of armor without which the ships were worthless, who opposed any adequate maintenance for the Navy Department and strove to cut down the number of men necessary to man our fleets. The men who did these things were one and all working to bring disaster on the country. They have no share in the glory of Manila. in the honor of Santiago. They have no cause to feel proud of the valor of our sea captains, of the renown of our flag.

[32:31] Their motives may or may not have been good, but their acts were heavily fraught with evil. They did ill for the national honor, and we won in spite of their sinister opposition. Now, apply this to our public men of today. Our army never has been built up as it should be built up. I shall not discuss with an audience this purile suggestion that a nation of 70 millions of free men is in danger of losing its liberties from the existence of an army

[33:08] of 100,000 men, three4s of whom will be employed in former foreign islands, in certain coast fortresses, and on Indian reservations. No man of good sense and stout heart can such a proposition ca No man of good sense and stout heart can such a proposition seriously. If we are such weaklings as the proposition implies, then we are unworthy of freedom. In any event, to no body of men in the United States is the country so much indebted

[33:44] as to the splendid officers and enlisted men of the regular army and navy. There is no body from which the country has less to fear, and none of which it should be prouder, none of which it should be more anxious to up. Our army needs complete reorganization, not merely enlarging. And the reorganization can only come as a result of legislation. A proper general staff should be established, and the positions of ordinance, commissary, and quartermaster officers should be filled by detail from

[34:21] the line. Above all, the army must be given the chance to exercise in large bodies. Never again should we see, as we saw in the Spanish War, major generals in command of divisions who had never before commanded three companies together in the field. Yet, incredible to relate, Congress has shown a queer inability to learn some of the lessons of war. There were large bodies of men in both branches who opposed the declaration of war, who opposed the ratification of peace, who opposed the upbuilding of the

[34:56] army, and who even opposed the purchase of the armor at a reasonable price for the battleships and cruisers, thereby putting an absolute stop to the building of any new fighting ships for the Navy. If during the years to come any disaster should befile befall our arms afloat or ashore and thereby should shame the United States. Remember the blame will lie upon the men whose names appear on the ro roll calls of Congress on the wrong side of these great questions. On them will lie the burden of the loss

[35:32] of our soldiers and sailors, of any dishonor to the flag, and upon you and the people of this country will lie the blame if you do not repudiate in no unmistakable way what these men have done. The blame will not rest upon the untrained commander of untrained troops, upon the civil officers of a department the organization of which has been left utterly inadequate, or upon the admiral with an insufficient number of ships, but upon the public men who have so

[36:07] lamentably failed in forethought as to refuse to remedy these evils long in advance, and upon the nation that stands behind those public men. So in the present hour, no small share of the responsibility for the bloodshed in the Philippines, the blood of our brothers and the blood of their wild and ignorant foes lies at the thresholds of those who so long delayed the adoption of the Treaty of Peace. and those who by their worse than foolish words

[36:42] deliberately invited a savage people to plunge into a war fra with sure disaster for them. A war too in which our own brave men who follow the flag must pay with their blood for the silly mock humanitarianism of the pafflers who sit at home in peace. The army and the navy are the sword and the shield which this nation must carry if she is to do her duty among the nations of the earth. If she is not to stand merely as the China of the western

[37:18] hemisphere, our proper conduct towards the tropic islands we have rested from Spain is merely the form of which our duty has taken at the moment. Of course, we are bound to handle the affairs of our homeland well. We must see that there is civic honesty, civic cleanliness, civic good sense in our home administration of the city, state and nation. We must strive for honity. Honesty in office, for honesty towards the creditors of the nation and of the individual, for the widest freedom of the individual initiative where

[37:54] possible, and for the wisest control of individual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare of many. But because we set our own household in order, we are not thereby excused from playing our part in the great affairs of the world. A man's first duty is to his own home, but he is not thereby excused from doing his duty to the state. For if he feels in this second duty, it is under the penalty of ceasing to be a

[38:29] free man. In the same way, while a nation's first duty is within its own borders, it is not thereby absolved from facing its duties in the world as a whole. And if it refuses to do so, it merely forfeits its rights to struggle for a place among the peoples that shape the destiny of mankind. In the West Indies and the Philippines alike, we are confronted by most difficult problems. It is cowardly to shrink from solving them in the proper

[39:05] way. Forsolved they must be, if not by us, than by some stranger and more manful, some stronger and more manful race. If we are too weak, too selfish, or too foolish to solve them, some bolder and abler people must undertake the solution. Personally, I am far too firm a believer in the greatness of my country and the power of my countrymen to admit for one moment that we shall ever be driven to the no ignoble alternative.

[39:41] The problems are different for the different islands. Puerto Rico is not large enough to stand alone. We must govern it wisely and well, primarily in the interests of its own people. Cuba is, in my judgment, entitled ultimately to settle for itself whether it shall be an independent state or an integral portion of the mightiest of republics. But until order and stable liberty are secured, we must must remain in the island to ensure them and to ensure them

[40:16] and infinite tact judgment, moderation and courage must be shown by our military and civilian representatives in keeping the island pacified, in relentlessly stamping out brigandage, in protecting all alike, and yet in showing proper recognition to the men who have fought for Cuban liberty. The Philippines offer a yet graver problem. Their population includes half-cast and native Christians, warlike Muslims, and wild pagans. Many of their people are utterly unfit for

[40:52] self-government and show no signs of becoming fit. Others may in time become fit, but at the present can only take part in self-government under a wise supervision, at once firm and beneficent. We have driven Spanish tyranny from the islands. If we now let it be replaced by savage anarchy, our work has been for harm and not for good. I have scant patience with those who fear to undertake the tasks the task of governing the Philippines and who openly avowed that they do fear to undertake it

[41:27] or that they shrink from it because the expense because of the expense and trouble. But I have even scantier patience with those who make a pretense of humanitarianism to hide and cover their timidity and who can't about liberty and the consent of the govern in order to excuse themsel from their unwillingness to play the part of men. Their doctrine, if carried out, would make it incumbent upon us to leave the Apaches of Arizona to work out their own salvation and to decline to interfere in

[42:04] a s single Indian reservation. Their doctrines condemn your forefathers and mine for ever having settled in these United States. England's rule in India and Egypt has been of great benefit to England for it has trained up generations of men accustomed to look at the larger and loftier side of public life. It has been of even greater benefit to India and Egypt. And finally and most of all it has advanced the cause of civilization. So if we do our duty a right in the Philippines, we will add to that

[42:39] national renown which is the highest and finest part of national life. We will greatly benefit the people of the Philippine Islands and above all we will play our part well in the great work of uplifting mankind. But to do this work, keep ever in mind that we must show in a very high degree the qualities of courage, of honesty, and of good judgment. Resistance must be stamped out. The first and all important work to be done is to establish the

[43:16] supremacy of our flag. We must put down armed resistance before we can accomplish anything else. And there should be no parlaying, no faltering in dealing with our foe. As for those in our own co own country who encourage the foe, we can afford contemptuously to disregard them. But it must be remembered that their utterances are not saved from being treasonable merely by the fact that they are despicable. Once we have put down armed resistance,

[43:52] once our rule is acknowledged, then an even more difficult task will begin. For then we must see to it that the islands are administered with absolute honesty and with good judgment. If we let the public service of the islands be turned into prey of the spoils of politicians, we shall have begun to tread the path which Spain trod in to her own destruction. We must send out there only good and able men chosen for their fitness and not because of their partisan service.

[44:29] And these men must not only administer impartial justice to the natives and serve their un own government with honesty and fidelity, but show the utmost tact and firmness. Remembering that with such people as those with whom we deal, weakness is the greatest of crimes, and next to weakness comes lack of consideration for their principles and prejudices. I preach to you then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for a life of ease, but for the life of strenuous

[45:06] endeavor. The 20th century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease in ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and we will win for ourselves the domination of the world.

[45:41] Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully, resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife through hard and dangerous endeavor that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

[46:16] as Theodore Roosevelt called for our nation. So, I hope each of you will be blessed in your own life and that of your family. [snorts] Wishing you a very meaningful and joyous Labor Day. Signing off as I always do. Marie Darling, you are my bell. Courage at all times.