IRVING T. BUSH

IN HONOR OF SECRETARY HUGHES

Irving T. Bush was born in Ridgeway, Michigan, in 1869, and at nineteen entered the Bush and Denslow Manufacturing Company of which his father was president. He founded the Bush Terminal Company in 1902 and is the creator of the Bush Terminal with its many warehouses, piers and industrial buildings covering over two hundred acres in South Brooklyn. As president of the New York Chamber of Commerce in the years 1922-24, he delivered many addresses of welcome and introduction, including the following speech at the dinner given in honor of Mr. Hughes on November 10, 1925.

I HOPE no one here to-night is under the impression that it is my duty to introduce to you two men whom through long years of public life you have learned to honor and love. They need no introduction, either to you, their friends, or to the world, for they are known and honored far beyond the limits of even our invisible audience to-night.

I am not here to introduce to you either our guest, Mr. Hughes, or Mr. Root who will speak to him for us. I am here to tell Mr. Hughes that this room is filled to its utmost limits with his friends-with friends, Mr. Hughes, who have not come because you hold office, and may perhaps do something for them, but with friends who are your fellow townsmen— who have watched your career with ever increasing honor and respect, and who, as the mellowing influence of time has ripened that career, have felt these sentiments deepen into a real affection; by friends who ask nothing and expect nothing from this gathering, save an opportunity to tell you that they cherish a deep pride in you as a citizen of New York.

You have been Governor of this great State. You have been Chief Justice of the highest court of the nation. You have

sat at the right hand of two Presidents as Secretary of State. We honor you for those achievements, but we are not here to-night because of them. We are not here because of what you have done, but because of the way in which you have done it and because your career has been an open book, and never in all the years of all your public service has there been a whisper behind a single hand.

I would not have you think I hold lightly the high offices you have held, or the success of your career in many material ways. I know that Mr. Root will have something to say about the many splendid things you have done in the service of your fellow citizens. I have in my mind a more intimate and personal note during the few minutes I shall speak. I wish to tear away the slightest veil of formality from this dinner, and to tell you why I think this room is crowded to the doors tonight by men who are your friends. Many are of long standing, but perhaps some of them you may never have met, but they are your friends nevertheless, because they believe in you. They may never tell in any other way of their regard for you, but the appreciation which is uttered is not always the most real, and they are here to-night in silent-not too silent, I hope -testimony of their affection.

You have faced many difficult issues, and found solutions to many hard problems, but you have never chosen the easiest way. As a result, you have been misunderstood sometimes, but have won your way to our fullest confidence and affection, largely I think because you have faced each problem as a moral issue.

I remember a long talk I had with you when I returned from Russia two years ago and as I left you said: "It is a moral issue, Mr. Bush. We cannot have contact with a government which does not hold standards of honor similar to our own."

It is said the people of New York are cold and ungrateful. It is not true. We are busy-and in our hurry and pre-occupation, we sometimes fail to speak our appreciation of those who render us great public service.

To-night each one of us is here to pay our tribute to you for the great service rendered to us and to the world-and to say to you, we honor you for the things you have done, but

we pay our friendly tribute because you have stood erect in doing them. We cherish you because you have done great things in a simple, modest way. We like your modesty. Perhaps because we are not always accustomed to it. It is refreshing in a man in public life. You have been content to do the job, and let credit find its own resting place. I do not remember, when I visited Albany years ago, that I saw a sign upon the Capitol, announcing that this was Governor Hughes' Capitol. Nor in Washington, do I remember a sign proclaiming that this was Secretary Hughes' Department of State. You made us feel you were working for us by the simple method of really working for us. And when you laid down your tools of office, there was no fuss and feathers. You passed out of office as quietly as you had entered and filled it—and we liked that modesty. The noisy qualities may meet with popular acclaim sometimes, but it is the finer qualities we cherish in our hearts.

It is Armistice Eve. Seven years ago to-night "No Man's Land" still lay between hostile armies. You had no hand in drawing the treaties which some still call the treaties of peace, but you have written in the books of history its best pages of peace. The world acclaims-and justly-the pact of Locarno, but back of Locarno lay the disarmament agreement at Washington, over which you presided, and the Dawes Plan-the sane child of your sane mind.

Mr. Dawes, our own Owen Young, who is unfortunately out of town to-night, and their associates in the finely constructive work done by the Dawes Commission, would be the first to give credit to you for formulating the idea of the Commission, and waiting patiently until the world buried enough of its hate to see again with sanity.

So we chose Armistice Eve to stop our busy lives, and pay our tribute to you, because your mind has written into every document it has touched "good-will" where once there was hate.

And to you, Mr. Root, may I say a special word of greeting from these other friends of Mr. Hughes, for whom I am privileged to speak to-night.

You are here to do honor to our guest, but you are held in such affectionate esteem by us all, that before I give way to

you, I should like to tell you how deeply appreciative is the Committee, and all of this great body of fellow hosts, to you for your speaking for them to-night.

Indeed, in our hearts, you and Mr. Hughes have found very similar corners and they are warm corners-kept warm by the fire of a very real and affectionate friendship. Only a short generation ahead of Mr. Hughes in years, your career has been very similar to his, and marked by the same fine disregard for a cheap popularity, and the same high regard for those finer qualities of life which we may sometimes seem to fail to appreciate, but which in our heart of hearts win highest honor and our deepest affection. These things have been said to you many times, but they cannot be said too often.

You and Mr. Hughes have made many sacrifices in our public service and have achieved great distinction in your chosen profession. The road upward has been a little different in detail, but, in the end, each has sat at the right hand of two Presidents. In thanking you for speaking for us to-night, may I tender to you the affectionate and appreciative greetings of these friends of yours and Mr. Hughes, and our warmest thanks for the long years of faithful service in our behalf. I think I may also say, and betray no confidence in doing so, that your and Mr. Hughes' friends have wished that at the council table in Washington you each in turn might have moved one seat nearer the head of the table.

We live in a democracy and with all its blessings, it has the fault of being a bit haphazard in choosing some of its representatives. I read an article in a magazine some time ago illustrating this point. It started with a description of a laundryman who was head of the police force in San Francisco, and spoke of the horseshoer who was Commissioner of Streets and Bridges in Houston, Texas, of the barber who was Commissioner of Public Utilities in Topeka, Kansas, and concluded with the undertaker who was Commissioner of Health in Jersey City. A democracy is after all a government by the law of averages, and it is unfortunate that the highest intellectual standards do not always make the most popular appeal to the average voter. I sometimes think our best Presidents within recent years, at least, have been our accidents.

Well-the day of accidents may not be past-and I will say to Mr. Hughes-as I did to my daughter, when I noticed it took two hours to say "good night" to her fiancé it takes a long time to say "good-by" to a good man.

Mr. Root, I now yield to you. This is an audience of friends. You need no introduction to them-nor they to you.