My friends and fellow-citizens, think what a privilege ours is; think what it means for this nation; that there is no place in this Union where the President of the Union can feel more at home, can feel more that he is indeed the President of all the Union, of a reunited and indissoluble Union, than here under the shadow of the first capitol of the Confederacy. Poor indeed would be the soul of the man who did not leave Montgomery a better American than he came into it, after being received as I have been received to-day. In speaking to all of you I know that the younger—those of my own age and younger still—will not grudge my saying a special word of greeting to the veterans of the great war. Here again think how fortunate we are. There is no other people of which history tells, which, having passed through such a war as we passed through, after forty years finds not only that the flag which had been rent in sunder is once again whole without a seam; finds all the people challenging as theirs the right to claim their part in the heritage of glory bequeathed to every American, alike by the Americans who wore the blue and the Americans who wore the gray in the great Civil War. In coming to your mighty and beautiful State, with its wealth of agriculture, its wealth of manufactures, I am more than ever impressed by the solidarity of our interests as a people. As the Governor pointed out, the greatest and most important single export of our people is the export of cotton; and the whole nation is concerned in the welfare of the cotton growers. It is not only important for Alabama and the rest of the Gulf States; it is important for the entire Union, because it is the cotton crop which determines the balance of trade as being in favor of this Nation. The business of any part of this Nation is the business of the entire Nation; and the National Government is bound to do everything it can in the interest of the cotton growers; to preserve your markets; to do everything that can possibly be done to see that the natural demand for cotton abroad is kept up and is met here under fair conditions by our own people. Perhaps no State in the Union is more interested than this in the performance of what is to be the greatest engineering feat the world has yet seen—the building of the Isthmian canal. The cotton crop largely goes to Asia. The canal will of course immensely shorten the water route to Asia. Our influence in the Orient must be kept at such a pitch as will ensure our being able to guarantee fair treatment to our merchants and manufacturers by China. We must insist upon having fair treatment; and as a step toward getting it we must give fair treatment in return. I would demand that on ethical grounds alone; I would demand it also on grounds of self-interest.