WILLIAM McKINLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D.C., August 29, 1901.

In accordance with provisions of Section 179 Revised Statutes as amended by act approved August 5th, 1882 (22 Stats, at large 238), Brigadier-General G.S.  Gillespie, Corps of Engineers, United States Army, is authorized and directed to perform the duties of Secretary of War during the temporary absence from the seat of Government of the Secretary of War and the Assistant Secretary of War.

WILLIAM McKINLEY.

PRESIDENT McKINLEY’S LAST PUBLIC UTTERANCE TO THE PEOPLE, BUFFALO, N.Y., SEPTEMBER 5TH, 1901.

President Milburn, Director General Buchanan, Commissioners, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I am glad to be again in the city of Buffalo and exchange greetings with her people, to whose generous hospitality I am not a stranger and with whose good will I have been repeatedly and signally honored.  To-day I have additional satisfaction in meeting and giving welcome to the foreign representatives assembled here, whose presence and participation in this exposition have contributed in so marked a degree to its interest and success.  To the Commissioners of the Dominion of Canada and the British colonies, the French colonies, the republics of Mexico and Central and South America and the commissioners of Cuba and Puerto Rico, who share with us in this undertaking, we give the hand of fellowship and felicitate with them upon the triumphs of art, science, education and manufacture which the old has bequeathed to the new century.  Expositions are the timekeepers of progress.  They record the world’s advancement.  They stimulate the energy, enterprise and intellect of the people and quicken human genius.  They go into the home.  They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people.  They open mighty storehouses of information to the student.  Every exposition, great or small, has helped to some onward step.  Comparison of ideas is always educational, and as such instruct the brain and hand of man.  Friendly rivalry follows, which is the spur to industrial improvement, the inspiration to useful invention and to high endeavor in all departments of human activity.  It exacts a study of the wants, comforts and even the whims of the people and recognizes the efficiency of high quality and new pieces to win their favor.  The quest for trade is an incentive to men of business to devise, invent, improve and economize in the cost of production.

Business life, whether among ourselves or with other people, is ever a sharp struggle for success.  It will be none the less so in the future.  Without competition we would be clinging to the clumsy antiquated processes of farming and manufacture and the methods of business of long ago, and the twentieth would be no further advanced than the eighteenth century.  But though commercial competitors we are, commercial enemies we must not be.