Photo of the Day

It is September 2, 1901, the opening day of the Minnesota State Fair.

And the keynote speaker for the opening ceremonies is Vice President Theodore Roosevelt.

He will use the occasion to deliver one of the most memorable lines in history:

‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’

Left: A 'Crazy Quilt,' c. 1890. Right: the fairgrounds.

Amid the livestock displays and competition quilts, Roosevelt will lay the ground rules for the nation’s conduct in a rapidly changing world of empires.

Queen Victoria is seated in the center. She is looking at her granddaughter, Empress Alexandra of Russia, and her baby Olga. Alexandra's husband, Tsar Nicholas II, stands on the left and Prince Edward stands on the right. Photo taken in 1896.

Queen Victoria’s sixty-three-year reign had come to an end in January, leaving her son and successor, Edward VII, to rule a global empire of 450 million people.

Boer fighters in a South African trench.

Among his challenges: a struggle for Africa’s mineral wealth in a second war with Dutch settlers in independent regions of South Africa.

A company of Boxers walk down a street in China during the Boxer Rebellion..

In China, an uprising against foreign intervention has failed.

Troops from a coalition of eight nations have defeated these fighters, guaranteeing foreign powers continued access to the country.

Future US President William Howard Taft rides a water buffalo in the Philippines, 1904. Taft served at the head of the first civilian US government in the territory.

The US, too, had then become an empire, possessing Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines as a result of the Spanish-American War and having also annexed Hawaii.

These developments, more than championship hogs or apple pies, were on his mind as he stepped onto the speaker’s platform.

In less than two weeks, he will have a free hand to follow his own advice, when he becomes the US President following the death of William McKinley.

From his speech:

“Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say.

A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick – you will go far.’

If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.

In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting, and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words, his position becomes absolutely contemptible.

So it is with the nation.”

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda