In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena 9780801465970

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction: While Daring Greatly
Theodore Roosevelt Chronology
The Words of Theodore Roosevelt
A Note on Editorial Method
Selected Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

i n t h e wor d s of

theodore roosevelt

i n t h e wor d s of

theodore roosevelt Quotations from the Man in the Arena

EDITED BY PATRICIA O’TOOLE

cornell university press ithaca and london

Frontispiece: Theodore Roosevelt in Boise City, Idaho. 1903. Prints and Photographs division. The Library of Congress. Copyright © 2012 by Patricia O’Toole All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2012 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858–1919. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt : quotations from the man in the arena / edited by Patricia O’Toole. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4996-3 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858–1919—Quotations. 2. Presidents—United States—Quotations. I. O’Toole, Patricia. II. Title. E757.A3 2012 973.911092—dc23 2012007312

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress. cornell.edu. Cloth printing

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contents

Preface xi Introduction: While Daring Greatly

1

Theodore Roosevelt Chronology 39 The Words of Theodore Roosevelt Action America Americans Archaeologists Army Art Authors The Big Stick Books Bullies Bull Moose Business Character Children

45 46 47 48 48 49 52 55 56 58 58 59 60 62

Citizens Class Conflict Commonweal Community Conduct Congress Conservation Constitution Criticism Defense Democracy Determination Education Equality

45 62 65 68 70 72 72 72 74 76 79 80 82 84 85

c o nt ent s Experimentation Extremism Fairness Family Life Fatherhood Foreign Policy Freedom Governing Government Great Nations Great White Fleet Historians History Human Nature Hunters Hunting Ideals Immigrants Individualism Industrial Relations Industry International Relations Justice

87 87 88 88 89 90 90 90 91 93 96 96 97 98 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 110

Life Abraham Lincoln Literature Lynching The Man in the Arena Marriage Military Monopoly Motherhood Nationalism National Parks Natural Resources Navy Panama Canal Peace Philanthropy Politicians Political Campaigns Political Parties Politics Pollution Posterity Power

Kings Labor Law Lawsuits Leadership Legislation Liberty

122 122 123 123 124 125 128 129 130 131 132 134 135 138 139 139 140 140 141

110 111 113 114 114 115 117

Prejudice Presidency Press Progressive Party Progressivism Promises Prosperity

142 143 147 150 151 154 154

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119 120 121 121

c o nt ent s Public Life Reactionaries Reading Reform Reformers Religion Religious Freedom The Rich Rights Roosevelt on Roosevelt Roosevelt’s Contemporaries on Roosevelt Rough Riders Scholarship Science Self-Discipline Senate Special Interests Sports Square Deal

155 157 157 158 160 160 162 163 167

Strenuous Life Success Tolerance Torture The Trusts Veterans Vice Vice Presidency Victory Virtue Voting War Washington Booker T. Wealth The West The White House Wildlife Photography Wilderness Women Women’s Rights

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169 171 172 172 173 173 174 175 176

A Note on Editorial Method 201 Selected Bibliography Index

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178 179 180 181 181 181 181 183 183 184 185 185 189 190 192 193 194 195 197 198

preface

When Cornell University Press invited me to edit a collection of Theodore Roosevelt quotations, I accepted for two reasons. From boyhood on, Roosevelt rarely passed up an opportunity to put his experiences, ideas, and opinions in writing. And among the millions of words he wrote, thousands still have the power to inspire, illuminate, and amuse. Soon after Roosevelt’s death, many of his works were collected and published in two massive editions, one spanning twenty volumes, the other twenty-four. Later came a tome of quotations (674 oversized pages packed with small type) and an eight-volume scholarly edition of his letters. While indispensable to historians and biographers, these gigantic compendia daunt nearly everyone else. In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt is not the world’s first slender book of his quotations for the general reader, but it is the first to be published by a university press and, to the best of my knowledge, the first intended for both general and academic audiences. For the scholar there are endnotes, citations to original sources, a bibliographic apparatus and, on page 205, a note on editorial method. Suggestions for further reading, compiled with the general reader in mind, appear on page 207. Additional insights into Roosevelt’s life and times can be pleasurably acquired by visiting various places: his birthplace in New York City; his ranch near Medora, North Dakota; the home where he lived most

prefac e of his adult life, Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, New York; and the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Up-to-date information for planning a visit to any of these sites is available on the Internet. Historians give Theodore Roosevelt high marks as a president, generally ranking him fourth or fifth—behind George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt, and either just ahead or just behind Woodrow Wilson. As president, Theodore Roosevelt is most often remembered for his visionary conservation programs, his “Big Stick” in foreign policy, and the “Square Deal,” his effort to curb the excesses of the industrial and financial behemoths of his day. But in many other areas he was a conventional upper-class Victorian with social attitudes that were out of tune with modern egalitarian sensibilities. What is an editor to do with the undeniably regressive side of this remarkably progressive president? Which is the “real” Theodore Roosevelt—the one who invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House, or the one who dishonorably discharged 150 black soldiers from the U.S. Army on the basis of allegations that did not hold up? Which is a man’s truest face—his best or his worst? I have decided to discuss Roosevelt’s prejudices in the introduction and to select quotations that I thought would interest a twenty-firstcentury reader. The unjust dismissal of the black soldiers and his conviction that the “savages” of the American West should not be allowed to obstruct the advance of Anglo-Saxon civilization cannot be erased from the record. But his prejudices are a reminder that even a person as broadminded, forward-thinking, and sympathetic as Theodore Roosevelt was not all-seeing. If he deserves our reproach, he also invites the broadminded, forward-thinking, and sympathetic among us to look in the mirror. At numerous points in gathering, selecting, typing, confirming, arranging (and rearranging) quotations, I had the support of my own small band of Rough Riders from xii

prefac e Columbia University’s School of the Arts: Jana Wright, dean of academic administration, along with current and former graduate students from the School’s Writing Program—Marin Sardy, Dana Burnell, and Matthew Parker. Matthew deserves a medal for conspicuous gallantry and unfailingly good-natured service during a summer when I was besieged by triple vision and double eye surgeries. Duane A. Young, M.D., graciously agreed to read the literature on Roosevelt’s health problems and greatly expanded my understanding of them. Long before there was a manuscript, Michael McGandy, my editor at Cornell University Press, persuaded Douglas Brinkley, Kathleen Dalton, and Tweed Roosevelt to review the proposal for such a book. Kathleen also reviewed the first draft and gave me the benefit of her vast knowledge of the strenuous life of Theodore Roosevelt. Special thanks to Sharon Kilzer of the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University for last-minute assistance with one of the illustrations. The book has also been refined by Michael’s editorial judgments and advice as well as by a multitude of contributions from his colleagues. I thank them all. If the original Rough Rider ever enjoyed a run as smooth as this one has been, I have yet to read about it. Patricia O’Toole

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i n t h e wor d s of

theodore roosevelt

i n t roduc t ion While Daring Greatly

Theodore Roosevelt liked to be thought of as a man of action, and that he was. He ranched. He hunted and explored. He fought in a war. And as president of the United States, he exercised his power to the full, maintaining that he was free to pursue any course of action not expressly prohibited by the Constitution. Roosevelt was also a man of words. All his life, he read voraciously and wrote prolifically. At ten, he was reading Darwin. At eleven, he conducted his first scientific study and recorded the results in “About Insects and Fishes, Natural History,” a forty-page notebook filled with the knowledge he had gained from his “ofservation” of their “habbits.” That his study had a preface shows something of the seriousness of his reading, and the first sentences show that he understood both the function of a preface and the scientist’s ambition to add to the sum of human knowledge: “All these insects are native of North America. Most of the insects are not in other books.”1 Before this budding natural historian was out of his teens, he published “The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks in Franklin County, N.Y.,” an annotated list of the species he and a friend had identified in the region.2 His first book, The Naval War of 1812, was published when he was twenty-three. Three dozen books followed—histories,

i n t roduc t ion natural histories, biographies, an autobiography, accounts of his outdoor adventures, and collections of the opinion pieces he wrote for magazines and newspapers. As a young man he wrote for the Atlantic, Harper’s Weekly, and the North American Review, among others, and after his presidency he earned his living as a columnist for Outlook and Metropolitan magazines and the Kansas City Star, which syndicated his column to hundreds of newspapers across the country. There was more: hundreds of state papers and speeches written without the aid of speechwriters and an estimated 150,000 letters. Many were two-line responses to admirers and autograph-seekers, but he also wrote hundreds of thoughtful letters to family and friends as well as an impressive array of long letters on subjects that interested him: politics and government, international affairs, conservation, social reform, history and natural history, hunting, literature, and war. The novella-length letter he wrote to the historian George O. Trevelyan after a two-month tour of Europe in 1910 remains an indispensable portrait of the Continent on the eve of the Great War.3 As a writer, Roosevelt tended toward verbosity and rarely composed a sentence that was a thing of beauty. But his prose was clear and forceful—“tinglingly alive,” as one of his contemporaries put it. When writing about animals or the landscape, he was content to describe, which he did uncommonly well because of his knowledge of the natural world and the joy in took in it. When addressing his fellow humans in person, he preached. The presidency, as he famously said, was a “bully pulpit.” He rarely missed an opportunity to sprint up its steps and tell the country what it ought to do. Whether Roosevelt’s fellow citizens agreed with his pronouncements or not, they never had to wonder what he was trying to say. He painted his thoughts boldly and brightly, out of a conviction that a good speech had to be as simple and direct as a circus poster. On the political stage, Roosevelt had a keen ear for action-packed 2

whi le dari ng g reat ly words and phrases: the strenuous life, the Big Stick, the Square Deal, the man in the arena. His insults were often original and always picturesque: lunatic fringe, muckraker, malefactors of great wealth. (In the privacy of his letters, he often went further, referring to a newspaper reporter he disliked as “a copper-riveted idiot,” George Bernard Shaw as “a blue-rumped ape,” and Woodrow Wilson—the bane of his later years—as “a Byzantine logothete” and “a dexterous thimble-rigger.”) 4 As a reader, Roosevelt immersed himself in the natural sciences and ventured far beyond. He enjoyed fiction, especially detective stories and novels with happy endings. He could quote poetry by the yard. On his travels abroad, he regularly surprised his hosts with his knowledge of their legends and folklore. And he claimed to love history because it demonstrated that previous generations were as prone to folly as his own. But he also read history for its power to transport him to worlds where he could have the vicarious pleasure of keeping company with kings and soldiers as they did great deeds. The thinking that went into his presidential decisions was often informed by the lessons he drew from his extensive knowledge of the triumphs and disasters of the past. 

The first Roosevelt in North America, Claes Maartenszen van Rosenvelt, arrived in the 1640s, when New York City was New Amsterdam, chief settlement of the colony of New Netherland. He settled in New Amsterdam, did well, and each generation of his descendants seemed to fare even better. They prospered as bankers, investors in real estate and securities, importers of glass. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Roosevelts, as they had taken to calling themselves, were one of the city’s wealthiest families. 3

i n t roduc t ion Theodore Roosevelt’s father, Theodore Sr., started out in his father’s employ but put the bulk of his energies into philanthropy and civic affairs. He played a significant role in the founding and funding of a children’s orthopedic hospital, the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Children’s Aid Society, and other charities. His wife, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, was the daughter of a Georgia merchant who owned some thirty slaves and an interest in a cotton mill. Thee and Mittie, as they were known, married in 1853, when he was twenty-two and she was eighteen. Between 1855 and 1861, they had four children: Anna, Theodore Jr., Elliott, and Corinne. The junior Theodore was born on October 27, 1858, in the family’s brownstone at 28 East 20th Street. He and his siblings were the seventh generation of Roosevelts to be born in Manhattan. When the Civil War began, Mittie’s brothers volunteered on the Confederate side. Thee supported the Union cause and wanted to enlist, but Mittie, who was anxious and in delicate health, argued that it would kill her if he fought against her brothers. Thee exercised his option to hire a man to go in his place and looked for other ways to serve the Union. He joined a local cavalry unit established to defend New York City in case of a Confederate attack and, with military families in mind, he and two friends persuaded Congress to establish a program enabling soldiers to send home part of their pay. At their own expense, the friends visited the New York divisions of the Union Army to explain the program and encourage soldiers to enroll.5 Theodore Roosevelt Jr. had many fond memories of his early years, but one phase of his childhood has come to overshadow all others, largely because of its prominence in his autobiography: his conquest of fear and physical weakness. His frailty was a result of asthma, a disease for which there was then no effective treatment, and his triumph began with a humiliation at the hands of two bullies. He was thirteen, traveling by stagecoach to the Maine woods to recover 4

whi le dari ng g reat ly from an asthmatic attack. The bullies, finding him too puny for a fistfight, merely toyed with him, an experience he found mortifying. He confided in his father, who arranged for boxing lessons, and the boy vowed that he would never again be in such a helpless position.6 Early biographers of Theodore Roosevelt read a great deal into the episode. Admirers used it to explain his fearlessness and resolve, while detractors saw it as an emotional wound that made him selfabsorbed and confrontational. If there can be no hard reckoning of how significant the incident was, there is no doubt that the memory of his tormentors and his helplessness remained “tinglingly alive.” It seems unlikely that a boy in good health would have grown into the man who invented and championed the Strenuous Life, his antidote to the mental, moral, and physical softness of the Gilded Age. The Big Stick of his foreign policy was not a club to be used against the weak but a weapon to be brandished at the world’s bullies. The Square Deal, his economic policy, was an effort to use the power of the federal government to protect the public from the bullies of capitalism—monopolists, ruthless employers, perpetrators of securities fraud, and purveyors of tainted meat and adulterated medicines. Throughout his adult life, he despised weakness of the moral variety but insisted that the strong had a duty to care for those who were weak through no fault of their own: children, the sick, the poor, and the aged. Theodore Roosevelt Sr. died in 1878, when he was forty-six and his namesake was a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Harvard. The son kept a painting of his father nearby for the rest of his life and always described him as “the finest man I ever knew.”7 Roosevelt entered Harvard with the idea of becoming a naturalist but graduated in June 1880 with a Phi Beta Kappa key and an ambition that was both grandiose and wildly inappropriate for one of his social position. “I intended to be one of the governing class,” he wrote in his autobiography. The men he knew best, “the men in the 5

i n t roduc t ion clubs of social pretension and the men of cultivated taste and easy life,” laughed at him. Politics was low, they told him—not a fit occupation for a gentleman. He thought that if that proved true, he would probably have to give it up, but he resolved not to quit, he wrote, “until I had made the effort and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my own in the rough and tumble.”8 Hedging his bet, Roosevelt enrolled in Columbia Law School in September. And in October, on his twenty-second birthday, he got married. His bride was a seventeen-year-old New England blueblood, Alice Hathaway Lee of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Restless in law school and eager to embark on his political career, Roosevelt allied himself with the city’s Republicans and in 1881 won election to the New York State Assembly. Politics—highly verbal, combative, awash in opportunities for initiative and action—fit perfectly with Theodore Roosevelt’s temperament. He sought out kindred spirits in the assembly and welded them into a group that soon became known as the Roosevelt Republicans. (When his fifth cousin Franklin Roosevelt, a generation younger, was elected to the New York State Senate, a political boss allegedly said, “You know these Roosevelts. This fellow is still young. Wouldn’t it be safer to drown him before he grows up?”) 9 The Roosevelt Republicans took on the bossism of both parties and were instrumental in electing Theodore as minority leader in his second term. Roosevelt instinctively understood the value of working across party lines and forming alliances with people from worlds far different from his own. He assisted the Democratic governor, Grover Cleveland, with civil service reform and abandoned the prevailing convictions of his constituents in Manhattan’s “Silk Stocking District” to help the labor organizer Samuel Gompers win a ban on the home manufacture of cigars. Roosevelt had expected to take the other side but changed his mind after Gompers took him to see the 6

whi le dari ng g reat ly tenements where cigars were made. Prolonged exposure to raw tobacco in tight, unventilated quarters was causing a variety of serious lung, eye, and skin ailments, especially in children. Roosevelt persuaded the assembly to outlaw cigar manufacturing at home, but his victory was short-lived. A judge struck down the law on the grounds that it violated an individual’s right to do as he chose in his own home. As Roosevelt watched other social and economic reforms meet the same fate, he concluded that Big Business had so distorted the judicial system that property rights were crowding out human rights. Roosevelt left the assembly in 1884 and would not hold another elective office for years, but the lesson he learned from Gompers left an indelible mark. Roosevelt would always be an energetic champion of the underdog, and he was a frequent critic of the courts.10 Roosevelt’s departure from Albany was precipitated by a double tragedy: his mother and his wife died on the same day, February 14, 1884. His mother died of typhoid fever, and his wife, who had given birth to a daughter two days before, died of nephritis. The deaths of that Valentine’s Day left the twenty-five-year-old Theodore Roosevelt a widower, an orphan, and a single father. He named the baby Alice Lee, after her mother, and left her in the care of his sister Anna, who had not yet married. After finishing the legislative term in Albany, he fled to a simple cabin on the Elkhorn River in the Badlands of North Dakota, where he could grieve in private. He also ranched, hunted, and wrote. From time to time Roosevelt traveled East to see his daughter and visit his late wife’s parents. On one of his trips to New York, he reconnected with his childhood friend Edith Kermit Carow, the friendship swelled into a romance, and he left the Badlands for good in 1886— in part because of the romance and in part because the Republicans needed a mayoral candidate for a three-way race they were certain to lose. He threw himself into the campaign despite the odds, and 7

i n t roduc t ion when he finished last, he reportedly said, “Well anyway, I had a bully time.”11 He took the loss in stride. He had already proposed to Edith, and in December they were married in a quiet ceremony in London. After a European honeymoon tour, Theodore and Edith gathered up his daughter Alice, then three, and over the next ten years added five children to their household: another Theodore, followed by Kermit, Ethel, Archie, and Quentin. The family settled in Oyster Bay, New York, at Sagamore Hill, the house that Theodore had started to build during his first marriage. But they often lived elsewhere as Theodore moved from one appointive position to another. Between 1887 and 1898, he spent eight years as a member of the U.S. Civil Service Commission in Washington, two as president of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners, and another in Washington as assistant secretary of the navy. While such posts gave him a certain amount of prestige and taught him a great deal about administration, they did not point to a brilliant political future, and had it not been for the Spanish-American War of 1898, Theodore Roosevelt might have been a mere footnote in the histories of his time. Shortly after Spain declared war on the United States, Roosevelt quit the Navy Department to join the army and raise a volunteer cavalry regiment. Native Americans, cowboys, and college athletes joined up, and the exploits of “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” were well covered by the newspaper correspondents who flocked to Cuba. It was, as the diplomat John Hay said, “a splendid little war,” over in four months.12 And when it ended with a U.S. victory that gave Cuba its independence from Spain, Colonel Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were national heroes. The Republicans of New York State capitalized on the colonel’s success and nominated him to run for governor. The party had been facing defeat because of a financial scandal, but with the most dashing young officer of the “splendid little war” at the head of their 8

Colonel Roosevelt of the Rough Riders, heroes of the Spanish-American War, 1898. Courtesy Theodore Roosevelt Center and the Library of Congress.

i n t roduc t ion ticket (and often campaigning in uniform), they managed a victory, albeit by a tiny margin—17,794 out of 1.35 million votes. On January 2, 1899, after fifteen years in the political wilderness, Governor Roosevelt returned to public office. He set to work in a reforming spirit that aimed to stop the bullying he saw on the economic playing field. He signed bills to improve working conditions, shorten working hours for women and children, and guarantee a minimum salary for schoolteachers. Seeing the ease with which a large corporation could control a municipal government, he began replacing local regulation with state regulation. The state began auditing corporate books, and corporate taxes were raised in order to reduce taxes on farmers and small businesses. Roosevelt also required insurance companies to increase their reserves and banned risky investments by savings banks. Roosevelt would make his most original and far-reaching contributions in conservation, a field in which government had played only a minor role. In partnership with Gifford Pinchot, chief forester of the United States, Governor Roosevelt launched an ambitious program to protect the state’s forests, wildlife, and natural wonders. He persuaded the legislature to acquire more forests, invest in the prevention of forest fires, and protect forests from over-logging. He also laid the groundwork for the creation of the great parks in the Catskills and the Adirondacks. His love of birds found its way into statutes protecting songbirds and imposing strict limits on the killing of game birds. In Cuba, Roosevelt discovered that he was a favorite of the newspaper correspondents; as candidate for governor, he realized that crowds found him charismatic. Aware of the value of both assets, Governor Roosevelt held press conferences daily—sometimes twice daily—to maintain his rapport with the press and to dominate the news. He was an excellent advocate for his forward-looking agenda, 10

whi le dari ng g reat ly and he had a way of framing disputes with the bosses or Wall Street as epic contests between David and Goliath. His skillful use of the press fed the public’s enthusiasm for him, and the public’s support made him an increasingly formidable opponent. 

Observers of the political scene assumed that the governorship of the country’s largest, most powerful state put Roosevelt on the road to the presidency, but just how he would get from the governor’s mansion to the White House was unclear. President McKinley would seek reelection in 1900, which left Roosevelt out of the running until 1904 at the earliest. There was also the possibility that the bosses and the plutocrats, who loathed his policies, would use their power and wealth to prevent his nomination. Henry Cabot Lodge, the junior senator from Massachusetts, who was keen to see his friend Roosevelt in the White House, suggested that he angle for the vice presidential nomination in 1900. McKinley would need a running mate, because Garret A. Hobart, the vice president, had died in office. While Lodge did not think that any man of action would enjoy the vice presidency, he thought that Roosevelt would be better off as vice president than in the bare-knuckle fights of New York politics. Roosevelt resisted the suggestion, fearing that he would not be able to act or even speak his mind as vice president. But his candidacy thrilled Wall Street and the bosses, who wanted him out of their way, and that plus the wild enthusiasm of the delegates at the Republican National Convention of 1900 persuaded him to capitulate. While McKinley ran a front-porch campaign, promising four more years of the “full dinner pail” to the carefully chosen groups of visitors who were marched to his home in Canton, Ohio, Roosevelt barnstormed the country, 11

i n t roduc t ion

Roosevelt, often campaigning in uniform, made a successful run for governor of New York a few months after returning from Cuba. Timothy L. Woodruff was a veteran of state politics. Courtesy Library of Congress.

generating excitement wherever he went. McKinley and Roosevelt defeated their Democratic opponents, William Jennings Bryan and Adlai E. Stevenson, by a margin of 6.12 percent in the popular vote. Vice President Roosevelt carried out his one official duty, presiding over the Senate, for a total of four days. Then Congress adjourned for the summer, and by the time it reconvened in the fall, McKinley had been assassinated. Roosevelt took the oath of office on September 14, 1901. At forty-two, he was the youngest U.S. president, a distinction he still holds. (John F. Kennedy, the youngest elected president, was forty-three on his inauguration day.) To calm the nation, the new president announced that he would continue McKinley’s program “absolutely unbroken,” but within a few months Roosevelt struck out in the direction he had been traveling 12

whi le dari ng g reat ly as governor: toward an expansion of executive power and an expansion of government regulation.13 He hinted at the latter in December, noting in his first annual message to Congress that the authors of the Constitution could not have foreseen the vast scale of modern industrial corporations or their nationwide reach or their profound effects on American society. In an economy dominated by large enterprises engaged in interstate commerce, state regulation no longer sufficed, Roosevelt said. In his view, the federal government was the only institution capable of refereeing the perennial tug-of-war between capital and labor. Roosevelt praised the captains of industry, saying that they had on the whole done great good. Any regulatory changes made by the government in the interest of the public good would have to be made cautiously: “The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness and ignorance. . . . The men who demand the impossible or the undesirable . . . hamper those who would endeavor to find out in rational fashion what the wrongs really are and to what extent and in what manner it is practicable to apply remedies.”14 But early in 1902, Roosevelt waved caution aside and filed his first antitrust suit, against the Northern Securities Company, owner of virtually all the railways in the north between Chicago and the Pacific. Northern Securities was a holding company, a corporate structure that had come into vogue after an 1895 Supreme Court decision put such companies beyond the reach of the federal government’s only law against monopoly. Alleging restraint of trade, Roosevelt’s suit demanded dissolution of the company. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government, paving the way for Roosevelt’s work as the “trust-buster.” He filed more than forty antitrust suits during his presidency. Less dramatic than trust-busting but equally significant was Roosevelt’s drive to extend the regulatory reach of the federal government. 13

i n t roduc t ion He persuaded Congress to create a Bureau of Corporations with the authority to audit and disclose corporate earnings. “The corporation which is honestly and fairly organized, whose managers in the conduct of its business recognize their obligation to deal squarely with their stockholders, their competitors, and the public, has nothing to fear from such supervision,” he wrote.15 He also established the Department of Commerce and Labor, the first new cabinet department in more than thirty years. To head it, Roosevelt chose Oscar S. Straus, who became the first Jew to hold a cabinet post. At Roosevelt’s urging, Congress passed two major laws regulating the railroads. The Elkins Act required railroads to charge all customers the same rates (thus ending discrimination against small shippers), and when the railroads found ways around the Elkins Act, he secured passage of the Hepburn Act, which empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission to set maximum shipping rates and inspect the railroads’ financial records. T.R. also secured laws that made employers liable for work injuries caused by the company’s negligence, banned the adulteration and mislabeling of food and drugs, and established a federal sanitary patrol of slaughterhouses. In the fall of 1902, Roosevelt made an unprecedented intervention in a labor dispute. Fifty thousand anthracite coal miners in Pennsylvania had gone on strike in the spring, demanding raises, an eighthour day, and recognition of their union, the United Mine Workers. The mine owners retaliated with a shutout, putting another ninety thousand men out of work, and gambled that starvation would force the miners back to work without a union. The standoff continued into the autumn, the price of coal skyrocketed, and the possibility of a winter without fuel raised the specter of widespread rioting. Roosevelt asked the miners and the union to settle their differences for the good of the country. They declined. As president, Roosevelt had no constitutional power to intervene, but the potential consequences of not acting seemed to him much 14

whi le dari ng g reat ly worse than the criticism he would surely get for exceeding his authority. He summoned the mine owners and the union leaders to Washington, and after a few prickly sessions the warring parties agreed that the miners would go back to work while a panel of arbitrators worked out a settlement that would bind both sides. The agreement averted the riots that Roosevelt had feared, but conservative Republicans complained of his high-handed disregard for the limits of presidential authority, and Wall Street branded him a traitor to the propertied class. “I do not know that I have ever had a more puzzling or a more important problem,” Roosevelt wrote one of his sisters. “The trouble with the excellent gentlemen who said that they would far rather die of cold than yield on such a high principle as recognizing arbitration with these striking miners was that they were not in danger of dying of cold. They would pay extra for their coal . . . but the poorer people around about them would and could get no coal and with them it would not be discomfort but acute misery and loss of life.” T.R. insisted that his first goal had been to stave off a public calamity, and his second had been to save “all of the class of big propertied men . . . from the dreadful punishment which their own folly would have brought on them if I had not acted.”16 The rich would often paint him as an enemy of capitalism, but the reforms he sought during his presidency were moderate (too moderate, according to some progressives), and he would always maintain that such changes were necessary in order to thwart the radicals bent on the total destruction of capitalism. What he wanted for all Americans, Roosevelt said, was a Square Deal. His was not a program to take from the rich and give to the poor; he merely wished to prevent crookedness in the dealing—the unfair advantages that Big Business and Big Finance enjoyed by virtue of their wealth and political influence: the monopolist’s power to gouge consumers and crush small competitors, the exploitation of 15

i n t roduc t ion labor, fictionalized accounting, and watered stock. He insisted that his policies were not aimed at men of great wealth but at the “malefactors of great wealth,” and he promised that he would not tolerate demagogues who incited the have-nots to violence against the haves.17 In truth, Roosevelt did not worry about class warfare as much as he worried about the political influence of the rich, and the Square Deal was his program to defend the defenseless against the most egregious excesses of unregulated capitalism. At the end of his presidency, he wrote a friend of his hope that “the average American citizen, the man who works hard, who does not live too easily, but who is a decent and upright fellow, shall feel that I have tried to the very best of my ability to be his representative.”18 The Square Deal greatly enlarged government’s role in economic affairs, and in partnership with his forester friend Pinchot, Roosevelt carried out an audacious, farsighted program that made the federal government the chief steward of the nation’s natural resources. Explaining the need for taking the long view, Roosevelt wrote, “The term ‘for the people’ must always include the people unborn as well as the people now alive, or the democratic ideal is not realized.”19 The Roosevelt administration’s record in conservation has never been surpassed. It created programs for restoring forests that had been logged with no thought of the future, for repairing thousands of square miles of eroded soil, and for preserving wilderness and wildlife. The number of national forests quintupled, from 30 to 150. T.R. persuaded Congress to fund two dozen massive irrigation projects. He added five national parks, and when Congress refused to fund more, he talked it into passing the Antiquities Act (1906), which allowed the president to designate an area as a “national monument” in order to preserve its natural beauty or its scientific or historical value. Roosevelt created nineteen national monuments, several 16

whi le dari ng g reat ly

At Yellowstone, 1903. Roosevelt persuaded Congress to establish more national parks, create national monuments and wildlife refuges, and pass comprehensive plans for managing the country’s natural resources. Courtesy Library of Congress.

of which were later incorporated into the park system. He also established more than fifty wildlife refuges. Roosevelt often sought to shift regulatory power from the states to the federal government, but in the case of conservation, he saw the value of a complementary effort by the states. During his last year in office, he convened the first White House governors’ conference, which he used to explain the federal conservation program and encourage the governors to take up the cause. The governors went 17

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At Yosemite, 1903. Roosevelt’s conservation efforts aimed to protect natural resources for “the people unborn as well as the people now alive.” Courtesy Library of Congress.

home enthused, and three dozen states soon established departments of conservation. 

As the twentieth century began, the United States was on the cusp of becoming a Great Power. It was the hegemon of the Western Hemisphere, Europe’s major trading partner, and a rising power in the Pacific. Roosevelt believed that the United States had to play a role in the world’s affairs and that doing so would serve U.S. interests. He subscribed to the theory advanced by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan in The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), which argued that Britannia ruled the world because she ruled the waves. Roosevelt had no interest in a British-style empire with colonies girdling the globe, but as assistant secretary of the Navy he became an enthusiastic supporter of the idea that U.S. power would be exponentially increased by control of a few small, well-located islands with good natural harbors. During McKinley’s presidency, the United States had annexed 18

whi le dari ng g reat ly the Hawaiian Islands, and after the Spanish-American War, it purchased the Philippines and Guam. All were valued chiefly for their potential as naval bases. From McKinley, Roosevelt inherited a war with the natives of the Philippines, who strenuously objected to the fact that they had been liberated from Spanish rule only to become subjects of the United States. While the U.S. government did not intend to annex the Philippines, it feared that in the absence of a strong central authority, the native factions competing for political power would soon be at war with each other. The Americans pledged to leave as soon as the Filipinos demonstrated that they were ready for self-government. The natives resisted fiercely from 1899 to 1902, when Roosevelt proclaimed an amnesty for the insurrectionists and replaced the U.S. military occupation with a civilian government headed by an American. By then, however, some 200,000 Filipinos and 4,000 U.S. soldiers had been killed. Roosevelt’s greatest contribution to the power of the United States was his acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone. The canal had been under construction in fits and starts since 1881, and when Roosevelt became president, the British held the controlling interest. Under the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901, the British ceded to the United States the right to build and manage an isthmian canal in exchange for a promise that it would be open to ships of all nations on fair and equal terms. In 1903, Colombia signed a treaty granting the United States a permanent lease on a six-mile-wide strip across Panama (then a part of Colombia) in exchange for $10 million in cash and an annual rent of $250,000. But after the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty, the Colombians demanded more money. Roosevelt refused, and a few months later, when the Panamanians revolted against the Colombian government, U.S. marines blocked the landing of Colombian troops. The 19

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At the White House, 1904. In world affairs, T.R. spoke softly and carried a big stick. Courtesy Library of Congress.

revolutionaries immediately declared Panama’s independence, and within forty-eight hours, the United States recognized the government of the breakaway Republic of Panama. Americans disturbed by the episode accused him of inciting the revolution. He noted that the 20

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At the Panama Canal, 1906. Roosevelt was the first president to travel outside the United States during his term in office. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Panamanians had been fighting for their independence for fifty years and insisted that when this rebellion broke out, he had simply refused to stamp out revolutionary fuses that were already burning. But he also liked to say, “I took Panama.”20 He counted the acquisition of the Canal Zone as his greatest presidential achievement, a gift to world commerce and a strategic boon to the United States. Roosevelt further strengthened U.S. control of the Western Hemisphere by enlarging the scope of the Monroe Doctrine. Since 1823, when President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off limits for further colonization, the European powers had largely deferred to Washington’s wishes in matters affecting the sovereignty of the nations in the Americas. But in 1902–1903, after 21

i n t roduc t ion Venezuela refused to honor its debts to European banks, the German and British navies sent warships and maintained a blockade for several months. Roosevelt put a U.S. naval squadron on alert and, invoking the Monroe Doctrine, warned the Europeans that he would not tolerate further aggression. He ended the crisis by persuading the quarreling parties to submit their disputes to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. T.R. did not believe that international arbitration would abolish war or that the existence of the tribunal in The Hague eliminated the need for a strong national defense. But he was the first head of state to submit a dispute to The Hague, and he secured the ratification of twenty-four binding arbitration treaties. He also supported the creation of a permanent world court. In 1904, when it appeared that the Venezuelan problem was about to repeat itself in Santo Domingo, he seized the customs house to reorganize the country’s finances and see that its loans from European banks were repaid. In the hope of preventing similar incidents, he drew up a corollary, which declared that if the Latin countries defaulted on debts to other nations, the United States would intervene on behalf of the creditors. The Roosevelt Corollary made the United States the policeman of the Western Hemisphere and turned the Monroe Doctrine on its ear: where Monroe had declared an end to European interference in Latin America, Roosevelt was promising that the United States would interfere on the Europeans’ behalf if the Latin Americans failed to meet their financial obligations.21 No president enjoyed the limelight more than Theodore Roosevelt, but in 1905 he worked backstage in hopes of ending the RussoJapanese War, a struggle for dominance in East Asia. Two years of war had humiliated Russia and nearly bankrupted Japan. More than two hundred thousand lives had been lost, but neither side would quit. Roosevelt’s success in bringing the belligerents together to 22

whi le dari ng g reat ly negotiate a settlement earned him a Nobel Peace Prize—the first given to an American. Close observation of the Russians and the Japanese convinced Roosevelt that the Russian Empire was moribund and that Japan would be a formidable rival to the United States in the Pacific. In 1906, when San Francisco’s school board offended Japan by segregating Japanese schoolchildren, Roosevelt walked very softly. He persuaded the school board and Japan to accept the “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” as it came to be known, which ended the segregation in exchange for a Japanese pledge to curtail the emigration of peasants and unskilled laborers to the United States.22 The following year, without consulting the cabinet or the Congress, T.R. ordered the U.S. Navy’s battleships painted a gleaming white and sent them on a cruise around the world. When the Senate Naval Affairs Committee reported that it did not intend to seek funds for the cruise, Roosevelt said he had enough money to send the fleet to the West Coast, and if Congress did not want the ships to return to the Atlantic, it could leave them there. Explaining the reasons for the cruise, he wrote his ambassador to Great Britain, “I want to make it evident to every foreign nation that I intend to do justice.”23 He did not mean to threaten but rather to show the world that the United States was ready and able to defend itself. In particular he hoped that the sight of the battle fleet would squelch Japanese thoughts of expanding eastward across the Pacific. The “Great White Fleet” was courteously received around the world, and Roosevelt considered the cruise the apotheosis of walking softly and carrying a big stick. Roosevelt’s final effort to contain Japan was a 1908 agreement in which the United States recognized Japan’s interests in Manchuria and Korea in exchange for Japanese recognition of U.S. possessions in the Pacific, affirmation of the Gentlemen’s Agreement, and a promise 23

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The president and his family, Sagamore Hill, 1903. From left: Quentin, Theodore, Ted, Archie, Alice, Kermit, Edith, and Ethel. Courtesy Library of Congress.

to maintain both the territorial integrity of China and the Open Door Policy. The agreement, negotiated by Secretary of State Elihu Root and Ambassador Takahira Kogoro¯, was simply an understanding between the two nations, not a treaty, and it was made without the advice and consent of the Senate or the permission of the other countries mentioned. Like the leaders of the Great Powers of Europe, Roosevelt believed that it was up to the strong nations to create a stable world order. No president had ever been as popular as Roosevelt, and no president before or since has made more effective use of his popularity. By 24

whi le dari ng g reat ly taking one unprecedented action after another, he shifted the seat of American political power from the Capitol to the White House. And by dominating the news, he dominated the country’s political conversation and shaped its political attitudes throughout his presidency. 

Since the time of George Washington, American presidents had served no more than two terms in office. Roosevelt, who had taken office six months into McKinley’s second term, might have used that fact to rationalize a run for another term in 1908, but on election night in 1904, he announced that he would not. With an eye on his standing in history, he had decided that there was less to be gained by slipping through a loophole than by acknowledging that seven and a half years in office was virtually the same as eight. “The wise custom which limits the president to two terms regards the substance and not the form,” he said. “Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.”24 So in 1908, Roosevelt helped his friend William Howard Taft, who had been a successful federal judge, governor general of the Philippines, and secretary of war, win the Republican presidential nomination. The campaign was one long compliment to Roosevelt, with Taft and his Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan arguing about which of them would be the better trustee of Roosevelt’s legacy in conservation, his regulatory reforms, the laws that gave average citizens a fairer shake, and the country’s newfound power in world affairs. Taft won handily, and as soon as the inaugural ceremony ended, Roosevelt offered his congratulations and boarded a train for Oyster Bay. Summing up his presidency, the newspapers were complimentary but tempered their praise with the observation that his greatest 25

i n t roduc t ion successes had been executive rather than legislative. This was true. Impatient with Congress, he had often worked around it, and in doing so he made the office of president more powerful than it had ever been. He had not abolished monopoly or ended the exploitation of labor, but he had greatly expanded the federal government’s power to regulate Big Business and manage the nation’s natural resources. And his sophisticated use of all the tools of diplomacy brought the United States into the ranks of the Great Powers. Many in Washington and on Wall Street thought that Roosevelt had overreached and over-preached and were glad to see him go, but most of his countrymen still held him in high esteem and just plain liked him. After three weeks at Sagamore Hill, the ex-president and his son Kermit left for a year in Africa. The trip, part safari and part scientific expedition for the Smithsonian Institution, was Roosevelt’s gift to himself at the end of twenty-five years of public service. Roosevelt also wanted to leave the political stage entirely to Taft. Finally, the trip allowed Roosevelt to take up the work he had chosen for his life after the White House. He was returning to the world of letters, which he had always found congenial and which now promised to be highly lucrative because of his fame. Scribner’s, a monthly magazine that published such distinguished authors as Henry James and Edith Wharton, engaged him to write a dozen articles from Africa for $50,000—a princely sum. (Using the Consumer Price Index to adjust for inflation, Roosevelt’s $50,000 was the equivalent of $1.24 million in 2010.) The safari was also an outgrowth of his lifelong interest in hunting and the natural world. He traveled at his own expense but under the aegis of the Smithsonian Institution, which sent three naturalists with him to collect specimens of Africa’s birds and mammals for study in the museum’s laboratories in Washington. Roosevelt came home from Africa by way of Europe in the spring of 1910. Heads of state from Italy to Norway wanted to pay him 26

whi le dari ng g reat ly tribute, and for two months he traveled from capital to capital, collecting honors and making speeches. His most memorable words, spoken at the Sorbonne in a speech on the duties of a citizen in a republic, remain his most eloquent expression of the standard by which he judged himself and every other figure in public life: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.25 The next three years were the most trying of Roosevelt’s career. He had not intended to rejoin the governing class after his presidency, but he was furious when he discovered that Taft had allowed the ship of state to drift far to the right. He was also troubled by the widening rift between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican Party. The hostility now threatened to split the party and give the Democrats their first real chance to return to power since 1892. Some blamed the rift on Roosevelt, arguing that it was his progressivism and his overly broad conception of presidential power that had alienated the old guard. But Roosevelt blamed Taft and went on the attack in two long speaking tours in 1910 and 1911. He claimed that he was simply trying to mend the breach in the Republican 27

i n t roduc t ion Party, but conservatives found his talk of a “New Nationalism,” in which the federal government would play a larger role in economic affairs, considerably more radical than the policies he had pursued as president. The New Nationalism, which Roosevelt first articulated on August 31, 1910, in a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, revolved around the idea that the federal government had to play the central role in a modern industrial economy because no other institution was powerful enough to do justice to both capital and labor. A good government ought to protect both human rights and property rights, he argued, but where property rights infringed on human rights, property would have to give way.26 To many, the New Nationalism sounded like a political platform and a testing of the waters for another run at the White House. But Roosevelt waited until February 21, 1912, to announce his intention to challenge Taft for the Republican nomination—an announcement he made in Taft’s home state of Ohio. Borrowing an idiom from boxing, he said, “My hat is in the ring.”27 T.R.’s chances of depriving an incumbent president of the nomination were slim, but not as slim as they would have been in previous elections, when nominees were chosen by a handful of bosses and rubber-stamped at state party caucuses. In 1912, a dozen states held primaries, which allowed the voters to do the choosing. Roosevelt gambled that if he won a large share of the primary votes, he could claim that he was the people’s choice and Taft was the creature of the bosses. He stunned the party by winning 278 of the 362 votes at stake in the primaries. But in the thirty-six states without primaries, Roosevelt was outmaneuvered by the bosses, and Taft went to Chicago with more than enough votes to win the nomination.28 Roosevelt’s operatives challenged the legitimacy of scores of Taft delegates, but when T.R. realized that he could not win, he made one of the boldest moves in the history of American presidential elections: 28

When his safari ended, in 1910, the former president burst onto the political scene instead of retiring quietly to Sagamore Hill. Courtesy Library of Congress.

i n t roduc t ion he denounced the Republicans as thieves and bolted the convention. The bolt spared him a defeat on the convention floor and kept his candidacy alive on a brand-new ticket of his own creation, the National Progressive Party. (It was always better known as the Bull Moose Party, a nickname that came from the answer T.R. had given when someone in a crowd yelled out to ask how he felt. “Like a Bull Moose,” he yelled back.29) He presented himself to his followers as a warrior for a grand cause, willing to give his all: What happens to me is not of the slightest consequence; I am to be used, as in a doubtful battle any man is used, to his hurt or not, so long as he is useful, and is then cast aside or left to die. I wish you to feel this. I mean it; and I shall need no sympathy when you are through with me, for this fight is far too great to permit us to concern ourselves about any one man’s welfare. If we are true to ourselves by putting far above our own interests the triumph of the high cause for which we battle we shall not lose. It would be far better to fail honorably for the cause we champion than it would be to win by foul methods the foul victory for which our opponents hope. But the victory shall be ours, and it shall be won as we have already won so many victories, by clean and honest fighting for the loftiest of causes. We fight in honorable fashion for the good of mankind; fearless of the future; unheeding of our individual fates; with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes; we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.30 The new National Progressive Party attracted civic-minded men and women disappointed by the resurgence of Republican conservatism but skeptical of socialism. They were teachers and lawyers, farmers and small business owners, urban reformers, and champions of world peace and women’s suffrage. Their aims often conflicted, 30

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In Chicago, 1912. “We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord,” Roosevelt told delegates to the first national convention of his new political party. Courtesy Library of Congress.

but Roosevelt managed to unite them on a platform far ahead of its time. Among other things, it called for income and inheritance taxes, an old-age insurance program akin to the present Social Security system, health insurance, unemployment insurance, a living wage, workers’ compensation, a ban on child labor, an end to the seven-day work week, and broad authority to regulate corporations. Roosevelt professed surprise when the newspapers reached into the past and held up his 1904 pledge not to seek a third term. He had been an ex-president since 1909, and a third term could not be objectionable unless it was a third consecutive term, he argued. After two terms in office, an incumbent running for a third term would have untold advantages over a challenger. But once a president was out of office, T.R. wrote a friend, “it is simply preposterous to suppose that the fact that he has been in office is of any consequence, 31

i n t roduc t ion for the whole immense machinery of patronage is in the hands of someone else.”31 The Democrats nominated Woodrow Wilson, the progressive governor of New Jersey, and the Socialists once again turned to Eugene Debs. No candidate campaigned harder than Roosevelt, but on election day the country chose Wilson, giving him 41.8 percent of the vote. Roosevelt finished with 27.4 percent, Taft with 23.2 percent. Debs drew 6 percent, twice his share in the 1908 election and the high-water mark for the Socialist Party. It has often been said that Roosevelt’s candidacy split the Republican vote and caused Taft’s defeat. That is not so: 77 percent of the electorate had wanted anyone but Taft. If Roosevelt had not run, some of his followers undoubtedly would have voted for Wilson, and Wilson would have needed only a third of the Roosevelt Progressives to beat Taft. Although the National Progressive Party was short-lived, its platform shaped American domestic policy for decades. Echoes of the Bull Moose campaign can still be heard in debates on what government ought to do for its citizens, how much government is enough, and how to make government more accountable to the people. Roosevelt the politician knew that he would be defeated, but Roosevelt the man felt the sting. He retreated to Sagamore Hill, went riding alone for hours on end, and devoted several months to writing his autobiography. “Father needs more scope,” Edith wrote one of the children.32 He also needed excitement and a challenge more diverting than waiting out his sadness. In the Roosevelt code of conduct, selfpity was a vice, so he refrained, at least on paper, from dwelling on his rejection by the American people. Edith had suggested that they travel abroad, perhaps to Brazil, where Kermit was working as an engineer for a company building a railroad. Brazil’s ambassador to the United States had invited 32

whi le dari ng g reat ly Roosevelt for a hunting trip and a series of lectures in Rio de Janeiro; after initially declining, he changed his mind. Word of his South American trip drew speaking invitations from other countries, and they too were accepted, but he gave up the hunting trip for an opportunity to accompany Colonel Candido Rondon, Brazil’s greatest explorer, down an uncharted river in the Amazon. Like the safari, the trip was to be an adventure with a scientific purpose, but this one proved much more hazardous. Roosevelt nearly died of malaria. The expedition, however, produced a major discovery—a river as long as the Rhine. Rondon christened it the Rio Téodoro.33 Roosevelt came home in the spring of 1914, fifty-five pounds lighter, his voice nearly gone, and so weak he could barely walk. He was not yet fifty-six, but the trip had turned him into an old man. Now shut out of politics and unable to earn a living except by his pen, Roosevelt was reduced to the role of critic, an irony he understood. The chief subject of his criticism was U.S. foreign policy, and his chief target was Woodrow Wilson. It seemed to Roosevelt that Wilson did not speak softly or carry a big stick. Instead he spoke of “moral force,” which he was rarely willing to back with military force. During the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), Wilson twice sent U.S. troops to Mexico but did not push to end the revolution. “In all our history there has been no more extraordinary example of queer infirmity of purpose in an important crisis than was shown by President Wilson in this matter,” Roosevelt wrote. “His business was either not to interfere at all or to interfere hard and effectively.”34 In the spring of 1915, when 124 Americans died in a German submarine attack on the British ocean liner Lusitania, Wilson, urging the public to keep its temper, said, “There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.”35 Roosevelt could scarcely contain his rage. “These men, women, and children of the Lusitania were massacred because the German Government believed that the Wilson 33

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In 1914, with his political life over and his health compromised by a strenuous trip down an uncharted river in the Amazon, Roosevelt became a full-time man of letters. Courtesy Library of Congress.

administration did not intend to back up its words with deeds,” he wrote.36 After the sinking of the Lusitania, Roosevelt believed that U.S. involvement in World War I was inevitable, but Wilson, determined to keep the country out of the war, did little to prepare for it. When at last the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, Roosevelt wrote, “We drifted into war unarmed and helpless, without having taken the smallest step to harden our huge but soft and lazy strength.”37 Roosevelt hurried to the White House to ask for permission to raise a division of volunteers to take to the battlefields of France. When Wilson said no, Roosevelt suspected him of vindictiveness, but Wilson had sound reasons for denying the request. The French 34

whi le dari ng g reat ly had advised against it, and it would have been political suicide for Wilson to give Roosevelt an opportunity to become a war hero again, just in time to run against the Democrats in 1920.38 Roosevelt watched his four sons go off to war in the summer of 1917 and through a newspaper column nationally syndicated by the Kansas City Star began doing what he could to speed up the war effort. Wilson asked Taft and a few other prominent Republicans to serve on wartime commissions, but he did not invite Roosevelt—a mistake, politically speaking. With no role in the administration’s war effort, Roosevelt was entirely free to criticize it. He appointed himself critic-in-chief, and with information from well-placed friends in Washington, he exposed one failure after another, hoping that his disclosures would spur the War Department to fi x the problems. Two of the Roosevelts’ sons, Ted and Archie, were seriously wounded on the Western Front, and Quentin, the youngest, was killed in aerial combat on July 14, 1918, Bastille Day. Theodore Roosevelt died six months later, on January 6, 1919, of an embolism. He was only sixty, and it has been said that he died of a broken heart. But he had been in fragile condition for a year—suffering from fevers attributed to the malaria he had contracted in the Amazon, crippled by arthritis, and weakened by two surgeries for other ailments. During the last week of his life, confined to his bed, he was still reading and writing: composing a book review, chastising a Republican newspaper editor who had characterized Wilson as an idealist, reviewing a new book, proofreading a series of magazine articles, and dictating a newspaper column about Wilson’s proposal for a League of Nations. The last thing he wrote in his own hand was a reminder to see the chairman of the Republican Party. Roosevelt was looking ahead to the presidential election of 1920, and there was talk that he would once again be the party’s man in the arena. 35

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Notes 1. Paul Russell Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 12–13. 2. Ibid., 102–103. 3. Elting Morison and John M. Blum, eds., Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951–1954), 7:348–399. 4. Quoted in Patricia O’Toole, When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 317. 5. Theodore and Mittie’s conflicts over the Civil War are well chronicled in Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Knopf, 2002), 26–35. 6. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 29–30. 7. For two of many examples see Murat Halstead, The Life of Theodore Roosevelt (n.p.: Saalfield Publishing Company, 1902), 23, and Bradley Gilman, Roosevelt, the Happy Warrior (Boston: Little Brown, 1921), 376. 8. Roosevelt, Autobiography, 56–57. 9. Quoted in James McGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956), 35–36. 10. Roosevelt, Autobiography, 81–83. 11. “TR’s Mayoral Campaign,” www.theodoreroosevelt.org 12. Quoted in Patricia O’Toole, The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 297. 13. “Mr. Roosevelt Is Now the President,” New York Times, Sept. 15, 1901, 1. 14. Hermann Hagedorn, ed., The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 20 vols., 1926), 15:87–93. 15. Ibid., 15:139–143. 16. Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924), 252–255. 17. “Roosevelt Won’t Drop Trust War,” New York Times, Aug. 21, 1907, 1. 36

whi le dari ng g reat ly 18. Quoted in O’Toole, When Trumpets Call, 33. 19. A Book Lover’s Holidays in the Open (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 319. 20. Quoted in Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, Shown in His Letters. 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 2:65. 21. Hagedorn, Works of TR, 15:253–259. 22. Roosevelt’s dealings with Japan are well covered in Charles E. Neu, An Uncertain Friendship: Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 1906–1909 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967). 23. Theodore Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid, Dec. 4, 1908, in Morison and Blum, Letters of TR, 6:1410–1411. 24. Bishop, TR and His Time, 1:334. 25. Hagedorn, Works of TR, 13:510. 26. Hagedorn, Works of TR, 17:5–22. 27. “My Hat Is in the Ring!” New York Tribune, Feb. 22, 1912, 1. 28. O’Toole, When Trumpets Call, 171. 29. Quoted in Joseph Gardner, Departing Glory (New York: Scribner, 1973), 241. 30. Hagedorn, Works of TR, 17:231. 31. “The Third Term: A Poll of the Press,” Outlook, March 23, 1912, 615–617. 32. Edith Roosevelt to Ethel Derby, 1913. Ethel Roosevelt Derby Papers, Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 33. The river is now known as the Rio Roosevelt. 34. Hagedorn, Works of TR, 17:125. 35. Arthur S. Link, ed., Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 69 vols. 1966–1994), 33:147–150. 36. Hagedorn, Works of TR, 268. 37. Bishop, TR and His Time, 2:441. 38. O’Toole, When Trumpets Call, 317–321.

37

t h eodor e roo se v e lt c h ronol ogy

1858 October 27. Born in New York City to Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt; is the second of their four children 1876 After education at home, enters Harvard College 1880 June 30. Graduates magna cum laude October 27. Marries Alice Hathaway Lee in Brookline, Massachusetts 1881 November 8. Running on Republican ticket, wins election to New York State Assembly 1882 Publishes first book, The Naval War of 1812 1883 Elected minority leader of New York State Assembly

t h eod or e roo se v e lt c h ronol ogy 1884 February 12. Birth of first daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt February 14. Wife dies of Bright’s disease and mother dies of typhoid fever June. Leaves for the Badlands of North Dakota to take up cattle ranching 1885 Sagamore Hill, his home in Oyster Bay, New York, is completed 1886 November 2. Defeated in race for mayor of New York City December 2. Marries childhood friend Edith Kermit Carow, in London 1887 Birth of first son, Theodore Jr. Four children follow: Kermit (1889), Ethel (1891), Archibald (1894), and Quentin (1897) 1889 Appointed to U.S. Civil Service Commission 1895 Elected president of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City 1897 Appointed assistant secretary of the Navy 1898 April 24. Spain declares war on the United States over U.S. support of Cuban independence movement 40

t h e o d o re ro o sevelt chro nolog y April 25. Commissioned as lieutenant colonel of the First U.S. Cavalry Volunteer Regiment (the “Rough Riders”) June 30. Promoted to colonel July 1. Leads cavalry charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill August 15. Returns from Cuba a war hero November 8. Elected governor of New York 1900 June 21. Receives Republican Party’s vice-presidential nomination November 6. McKinley and Roosevelt defeat William Jennings Bryan and Adlai E. Stevenson by 6.1-point margin 1901 September 6. McKinley shot by assassin September 14. McKinley dies, Roosevelt sworn in as twenty-sixth president October 16. Booker T. Washington dines at White House, infuriating white Southerners 1902 February 19. Begins “trust-busting” with suit against Northern Securities Company; some forty antitrust indictments follow December. Invokes Monroe Doctrine in dispute with Germany over Venezuela’s failure to repay loans from German banks 1903 February 14. Department of Commerce and Labor established February 20. Elkins Antirebate Act, ending discrimination in railroad shipping rates March 14. Creates first of fifty-one federal bird refuges November 7. Recognizes Republic of Panama, which had just declared its independence from Colombia 41

t h eod or e roo se v e lt c h ronol ogy November 18. Treaty with Panama authorizing U.S. building of the Panama Canal 1904 November 8. Elected president with Charles W. Fairbanks as running mate, defeating Judge Alton B. Parker and Henry G. Davis by unprecedented margin of 18.8 points December 6. Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserts U.S. authority to intervene in Latin America in cases of “flagrant and chronic wrongdoing” to correct abuses and prevent foreign aggression 1905 January 24. Establishes first of four federal game preserves February 1. Creates U.S. Forest Service and begins ambitious expansion of national forests August–September. As mediator, assists in ending Russo-Japanese War 1906 January. Successfully mediates Franco-German dispute over Morocco June 8. Antiquities Act, empowering the president to designate significant archeological ruins and natural wonders as national monuments June 29. Hepburn Act, giving Interstate Commerce Commission authority over railroad rates June 30. Pure Food and Drug Act; Meat Inspection Act November 6. After ordering dishonorable discharge of 167 black soldiers accused of mayhem in Brownsville, Texas, is severely criticized by black leaders; charges against soldiers are unfounded December 10. Receives Nobel Peace Prize 1907 December 16. Sends the battle fleet around the world in a show of U.S. naval power 42

t h e o d o re ro o sevelt chro nolog y 1908 May 13. Convenes first White House conference of governors, to discuss conservation 1909 March 4. Inauguration of his chosen successor, William Howard Taft March 23. Leaves for a year on safari in Africa 1910 May 5. Delivers Nobel Peace Prize address at Christiania, Norway June 18. Returns to the United States August 31. At Osawatomie, Kansas, delivers an address outlining the “New Nationalism,” his progressive political philosophy 1912 February 21. Challenges President Taft for Republican nomination June 22. Charges Republican National Convention with stealing his nomination August 5. Convenes his new National Progressive Party to continue his presidential run October 14. Wounded by an assassin November 5. Woodrow Wilson elected president with 41.8 percent of the vote; Roosevelt fi nishes with 27.4 percent, Taft with 23.2 percent December 27. Elected president of the American Historical Association 1914 February 27–April 27. With Brazilian explorer Candido Rondon and American naturalists, discovers and travels a 900-mile-long river in the Amazon Basin 43

t h eod or e roo se v e lt c h ronol ogy 1916 June 10. Declines presidential nomination of National Progressive Party November 7. Woodrow Wilson and Thomas R. Marshall elected by a 3.1-point margin, defeating Charles Evans Hughes and Charles W. Fairbanks 1917 April 6. United States enters World War I May 19. Roosevelt’s request to raise a division of volunteers denied by Wilson 1918 July 14. Son Quentin, an aviator, killed in France 1919 January 6. Dies in sleep at Sagamore Hill; probable cause: a pulmonary embolism

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Action We cannot do great deeds unless we are willing to do the small things that make up the sum of greatness. —Address at New York City, May 30, 1899 We can do a great deal when we undertake, soberly, to do the possible. When we undertake the impossible, we too often fail to do anything at all. —Address at Chicago, September 3, 1900 It is true of the nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer. Of course, if the dream is not followed by action, then it is a bubble; it has merely served to divert the man from doing something. But great action, action that is really great, cannot take place if the man has it not in his brain to think great thoughts, to dream great dreams. — Commencement address at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, June 21, 1905

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America Like all Americans, I like big things; big prairies, big forests and mountains, big wheat-fields, railroads—and herds of cattle, too— big factories, steamboats, and everything else. . . . It is of more importance that we should show ourselves honest, brave, truthful, and intelligent, than that we should own all the railways and grain elevators in the world. We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune. —Address at Dickinson, Dakota Territory, July 4, 1886 The one great reason for our having succeeded as no other people ever has, is to be found in that common sense which has enabled us to preserve the largest possible individual freedom on the one hand, while showing an equally remarkable capacity for combination on the other. — Gouverneur Morris, 1888 The West will shape our destinies because she will have more people and a greater territory, and because the whole development of the Western country is such as to make it peculiarly the exponent of all that is most vigorously and characteristically American in our national life. —“Fellow-Feeling as a Political Factor,” Century, January 1900 Our country has been populated by pioneers; and, therefore, it has in it more energy, more enterprise, more expansive power than any other in the wide world. —Address at Minnesota State Fair, St. Paul, September 2, 1901 The United States of America has not the option as to whether it will or will not play a great part in the world. It must play a great part. 46

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt All that it can decide is whether it will play that part well or badly. And it can play it badly if it adopts the role either of the coward or of the bully. . . . America can be true to itself, true to the great cause of freedom and justice, only if it shows itself ready and willing to resent wrong from the strong, and scrupulously desirous of doing generous justice to both strong and weak. —“Nationalism and International Relations,” Outlook, April 1, 1911

Americans To us as a people it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent. We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization. . . . [T]he success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours. —Inaugural Address as President, March 4, 1905 Our country offers the most wonderful example of democratic government on a giant scale that the world has ever seen; and the peoples of the world are watching to see whether we succeed or fail. We believe with all our hearts in democracy; in the capacity of the people to govern themselves; and we are bound to succeed, for our success means not only our own triumph, but the triumph of the cause of the rights of the people throughout the world, and the uplifting of the banner of hope for all the nations of mankind. —Address at the Republican State Convention, Saratoga, New York, September 27, 1910 47

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt The American people are good-natured to the point of lax indifference; but once roused, they act with the most straightforward and practical resolution. —New York, 1891 We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face the facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to foolish optimism, or succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism. —“What Americanism Means,” Forum, April 1894

Archaeologists Archaeologists, in order to reach the highest point in their profession, should be not merely antiquarians but out-of-door men, and above all, gifted with that supreme quality of the best type of historian, the quality of seeing the living body through the dry bones, and then making others see it also. In fact, this is just what the archaeologist is: a historian. The best archaeologist ought to be a man whose books would be as fascinating as Thucydides or Tacitus, Gibbon or Macaulay; as fascinating and as fundamentally truthful as Herodotus himself. — Outlook, September 30, 1911

Army I do not believe in a large standing army. Most emphatically I do not believe in militarism. Most emphatically I do not believe in any policy 48

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt of aggression by us. But I do believe that no man is really fit to be the free citizen of a free republic unless he is able to bear arms and at deed to serve with efficiency in the efficient army of the republic. —“Preparedness without Militarism,” New York Times, November 15, 1914 If we are a true democracy, if we really believe in government of the people by the people and for the people, if we believe in social and industrial justice to be achieved through the people, and therefore in the right of the people to demand the service of all the people, let us make the army fundamentally an army of the whole people. —“Uncle Sam’s Only Friend is Uncle Sam,” Metropolitan, November 1915

Art [A]rt, or at least that art for which I care, must present the ideal through the temperament and the interpretation of the painter. I do not greatly care for the reproduction of landscapes which in effect I see whenever I ride and walk. I wish the “light that never was on land and sea” in the pictures that I am to live with—and this light your paintings have. When I look at them I feel a lift in my soul; I feel my imagination stirred. —Letter to P. Marcius Simons, March 19, 1904 There was one note entirely absent from the [International Exhibition of Modern Art in New York*] and that was the note of the commonplace. There was not a touch of simpering, self-satisfied conventionality anywhere in the exhibition. . . . For all of this there can be only hearty praise. But this does not in the least mean that the 49

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt extremists whose paintings and pictures were represented are entitled to any praise, save, perhaps, that they have helped to break fetters. Probably in any reform movement, any progressive movement, in any field of life, the penalty for avoiding the commonplace is a liability to extravagance. It is vitally necessary to move forward and shake off the dead hand . . . and yet we have to face the fact that there is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement. —“An Art Exhibition,” Outlook, March 29, 1913 *The Armory Show, which gave Roosevelt and many other Americans accustomed to realism their first look at modern art. There should be a national gallery of art established in the capital city of this country. This is important not merely to the artistic but to the material welfare of the country. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1907 Normally there must be some relation between art and the national life if the art is to represent a real contribution to the sum of artistic world development. Nations have achieved greatness without this greatness representing any artistic side; other great nations have developed an artistic side only after a preliminary adoption of what has been supplied by the creative genius of some wholly alien people. But the national greatness which is wholly divorced from every form of artistic production, whether in literature, painting, sculpture, or architecture, unless it is marked by extraordinary achievements in war and government, is not merely a one-sided, but a malformed, greatness, as witness Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage. It behooves us in the United States not to be content with repeating on a larger scale the history of commercial materialism of the great Phoenician commonwealths. —Address to the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York City, November 16, 1916 50

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt Mere copying, mere imitation is as thoroughly unworthy in architecture as in every other branch of art and life. We need to profit by everything which has been done in the past, or is now being done, in other countries. We need always to adopt and develop what we adopt, and, if possible, ourselves to develop what is new and original or else what is indigenous to our soil. California and the Southwest generally have been particularly successful in thus developing the old colonial Spanish architecture to our own uses; and in places the Southwestern people are now doing the same thing with the far older architecture of the Pueblo Indians. . . . [U]nless there is real originality there will be no greatness. —Letter to American Institute of Architects, read at the Institute’s convention in Minneapolis, December 17, 1916 [Frederic Remington] has been granted the very unusual gift of excelling in two entirely distinct types of artistic work; for his bronzes are as noteworthy as his pictures. He is, of course, one of the most typical American artists we have ever had, and he has portrayed a most characteristic and yet vanishing type of American life. The soldier, the cowboy and rancher, the Indian, the horses and the cattle of the plains, will live in his pictures and bronzes, I verily believe, for all time. —Letter to Arthur W. Little, July 17, 1907 [Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s] genius had that lofty quality of insight which enables a man to see to the root of things, to discard all trappings that are not essential, and to grasp close at hand in the present the beauty and majesty which in most men’s eyes are dimmed until distance has softened the harsh angles and blotted out the trivial and the unlovely. He had, furthermore, that peculiar kind of genius in which a soaring imagination is held in check by 51

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt a self-mastery which eliminates all risk of the fantastic and the overstrained. —Address at Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, December 15, 1908

Authors (see also Books, Literature) [I]f I finish anything by Miss Austen I have a feeling that duty performed is a rainbow to the soul. But other booklovers who are very close kin to me, and whose taste I know to be better than mine, read Miss Austen all the time—and, moreover, they are very kind, and never pity me in too offensive a manner for not reading her myself. —An Autobiography, 1913 Foremost of all American writers on outdoor life is John Burroughs. . . . [H]is pages so thrill with the sights and sounds of outdoor life that nothing by any writer who is a mere professional scientist or a mere professional hunter can take their place or do more than supplement them—for scientist and hunter alike would do well to remember that before a book can take the highest rank in any particular line it must also rank high in literature proper. . . . As a woodland writer, Thoreau comes second only to Burroughs. —The Wilderness Hunter, 1893 [T]he backwoodsmen proper, both in their forest homes and when they first began to venture out on the prairie, have been portrayed by a master hand. In a succession of wonderfully drawn characters, ranging from Aaron Thousandacres and Ishmael Bush, Fenimore Cooper has preserved for always the likenesses of these stark pioneer settlers and 52

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt backwoods hunters. . . . As for Leatherstocking, he is one of the undying men of story; grand, simple, kindly, pure-minded, staunchly loyal, the type of the steel-thewed and iron-willed hunter warrior. —The Wilderness Hunter, 1893 When Dante deals with the crimes which he most abhorred, simony and barratry, he flails offenders of his age who were of the same type as those who in our days flourish by political or commercial corruption; and he names his offenders, both those just dead and those still living, and puts them, popes and politicians alike, in hell. There have been trust magnates and politicians and editors and magazinewriters in our own country whose lives and deeds were no more edifying than those of the men who lie in the third and the fifth chasm of the eighth circle of the Inferno; yet for a poet to name those men would be condemned as an instance of shocking taste. . . . Nevertheless, it would be a good thing if we could, in some measure, achieve the mighty Florentine’s high simplicity of soul, at least, to the extent of recognizing in those around us the eternal qualities which we admire or condemn in the men who wrought good or evil at any stage in the world’s previous history. —“Dante and the Bowery,” Outlook, August 26, 1911 It always interests me about Dickens to think how much first-class work he did and how almost all of it was mixed up with every kind of cheap, second-rate matter. I am very fond of him. There are innumerable characters that he has created which symbolize vices, virtues, follies, and the like almost as well as the characters in Bunyan; and therefore I think the wise thing to do is simply to skip the bosh and twaddle and vulgarity and untruth, and get the benefit out of the rest. Of course one fundamental difference between Thackeray and Dickens is that Thackeray was a gentleman and Dickens was not. But 53

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt a man might do some mighty good work and not be a gentleman in any sense. —Letter to Kermit Roosevelt, February 23, 1908 [Edgar Allan Poe] is our one super-eminent genius. In spite of the persistent effort to belittle him, and I must say it has come largely from New England, he still remains the most eminent literary character we have produced. I do not think that the New England school has tried to belittle him because he was not from New England, but their rules for literature are so adjusted that it will not permit of such an irregular genius as Poe. Even as sane a man as Holmes declared Poe to be one fifth genius and four fifths guff. If any man was ever about five fifths genius, that man was Poe. — Quoted in Lawrence F. Abbott, ed., The Letters of Archie Butt Count Tolstoy is a man of genius, a great novelist. War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Cossacks, Sebastopol are great books. As a novelist he has added materially to the sum of production of his generation. As a professional philosopher and moralist, I doubt if his influence has really been very extensive among men of action. . . . No man who possesses both robust common sense and high ideals, and who strives to apply both in actual living, is affected by Tolstoy’s teachings. —“Tolstoy,” Outlook, May 15, 1909 Very few great scientists have written interestingly, and these few have usually felt apologetic about it. Yet sooner or later the time will come when the mighty sweep of modern scientific discovery will be placed, by scientific men with the gift of expression, at the service of intelligent and cultivated laymen. Such service will be inestimable. . . . Scientific writers of note had grasped the fact of evolution long before Darwin and Huxley; and the theories advanced by these 54

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt men to explain evolution were not much more unsatisfactory, as full explanations, than the theory of natural selection itself. Yet, where their predecessors had created hardly a ripple, Darwin and Huxley succeeded in effecting a complete revolution in the thought of the age. . . . I believe that the chief explanation of the difference was the very simple one that what Darwin and Huxley wrote was interesting to read. —“History as Literature,” address to the American Historical Association, Boston, December 27, 1912 It seems rather odd that it should be necessary to insist upon the fact that the essence of a book is to be readable; but most certainly the average scientific or historical writer needs to have this elementary proposition drilled into his brain. Perhaps if this drilling were once accomplished, we Americans would stand a greater chance of producing an occasional Darwin or Gibbon. — Review of Brander Matthews, An Introduction to the Study of American Literature, in Bookman, February 1896

The Big Stick 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. —Address at the Minnesota State Fair, September 2, 1901 The only safe rule is to promise little, and faithfully to keep every promise; to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” —An Autobiography, 1913 55

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Books (see also Authors, Literature, Reading) Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover’s besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls “the mad pride of intellectuality,” taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books. . . . Now and then I am asked as to “what books a statesman should read,” and my answer is, poetry and novels—including short stories. . . . If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse. —An Autobiography, 1913 I can no more explain why I like “natural history” than why I like California canned peaches; nor why I do not care for that enormous brand of natural history which deals with invertebrates any more than why I do not care for brandied peaches. All I can say is that almost as soon as I began to read at all I began to like to read about the natural history of beasts and birds and the more formidable or interesting reptiles and fishes. —“My Life as a Naturalist,” American Museum Journal, May 1918 I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of the One Hundred Best Books or the Five-Foot Library. It is all right for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good books; and if he is to go off for a year or so where he cannot get many books, it is an 56

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt excellent thing to choose a five-foot library of particular books which in that particular year and on that particular trip he would like to read. But there is no such thing as a hundred books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for one man at all times; and there is no such thing as a five-foot library which will satisfy the needs of even one particular man on different occasions extending over a number of years. —An Autobiography, 1913 I have never followed any plan in reading which would apply to all persons under all circumstances; and indeed it seems to me that no plan can be laid down that will be generally applicable. If a man is not fond of books, to him reading of any kind will be drudgery. I most sincerely commiserate such a person, but I do not know how to help him. If a man or a woman is fond of books he or she will naturally seek the books that the mind and soul demand. Suggestions of a possibly helpful character can be made by outsiders, but only suggestions; and they will probably be helpful about in proportion to the outsider’s knowledge of the mind and soul of the person to be helped. —A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open, 1916 Many learned people seem to feel that the quality of readableness in a book is one which warrants suspicion. Indeed, not a few learned people seem to feel that the fact that a book is interesting is proof that it is shallow. —“History as Literature,” address to the American Historical Association, Boston, December 27, 1912 Fortunately I had enough good sense, or obstinacy, or something, to retain a subconscious belief that inasmuch as books were meant to be 57

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt read, good books ought to be interesting, and the best books capable in addition of giving one a lift upward in some direction. —Letter to George Otto Trevelyan, January 23, 1904 I like a good detective story when I can get it. These things may not be literature, but they interest and rest me. They make up the salads of my reading. — Quoted in John J. Leary Jr., Talks with T.R. I happen to be devoted to Macbeth, whereas I very seldom read Hamlet (though I like parts of it). Now I am humbly and sincerely conscious that this is a demerit in me and not in Hamlet. —An Autobiography, 1913

Bullies I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. —An Autobiography, 1913 Bullies do not make brave men; and boys and men of foul life cannot become good citizens, good Americans, until they change; and even after the change, scars will be left on their souls. —“What Can We Expect from the American Boy?” St. Nicholas, May 1900

Bull Moose (see Progressive Party, Progressivism)

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Business (see also Industrial Relations, Labor) We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal. —“Trusts, the People, and the Square Deal,” Outlook, November 18, 1911 Publicity* can do no harm to the honest corporation. The only corporation that has cause to dread it is the corporation which shrinks from the light, and about the welfare of such corporations we need not be oversensitive. —Annual Message to Congress, December 7, 1903 *Public disclosure of corporate finances The corporation is the creature of the state. It should always be held accountable to some sovereign, and this accountability should be real and not sham. Therefore, in my judgment, all corporations doing an interstate business, and this means the great majority of the largest corporations, should be held accountable to the federal government, because their accountability should be co-extensive with their field of action. But most certainly we should not strive to prevent or limit corporate activity. We should strive to secure such effective supervision over it, such power of regulation over it, as to enable us to guarantee that its activity will be exercised only in ways beneficial to the public. —Address at Atlanta, Georgia, October 20, 1905 The corporation must be protected, must be given its rights, but it must be prevented from doing wrong; and its managers must be held

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt in strict accountability when it does wrong; and it must be deprived of all secret influence in our public life. —Address at Republican State Convention, Saratoga, New York, September 27, 1910 The government ought not to conduct the business of the country; but it ought to regulate it so that it shall be conducted in the interest of the public. —Address at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, October 4, 1906 All very big business, even though honestly conducted, is fraught with such potentiality of menace that there should be thoroughgoing governmental control over it, so that its efficiency in promoting prosperity at home and increasing the power of the nation in international commerce may be maintained, and at the same time fair play insured to the wage-workers, the small business competitors, the investors, and the general public. —“Confession of Faith,” address at the Progressive National Convention, Chicago, August 6, 1912

Character Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character—character that does and dares as well as endures, character that is active in the performance of virtue no less than firm in the refusal to do aught that is vicious or degraded. —“Character and Success,” Outlook, March 31, 1900 It is a good thing to have a keen, fine intellectual development in a nation, to produce orators, artists, successful business men; but it is an 60

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt infinitely greater thing to have those solid qualities which we group together under the name of character—sobriety, steadfastness, the sense of obligation toward one’s neighbor and one’s God, hard common sense, and, combined with it, the lift of generous enthusiasm toward whatever is right. These are the qualities which go to make up true national greatness. —Address at Galena, Illinois, April 27, 1900 I would rather have a boy of mine stand high in his studies than high in athletics, but I would a good deal rather have him show true manliness of character than show either intellectual or physical prowess. —Letter to Kermit Roosevelt, October 2, 1903 A coward who appreciates that cowardice is a sin, an unpardonable sin if persevered in, may train himself so as, first to act like a brave man, and then finally to feel like and therefore to be a brave man. But the coward who excuses his cowardice, who tries to cloak it behind lofty words, who perseveres in it, and does not appreciate his own infamy, is beyond all hope. —“Peace Insurance by Preparedness against War,” Metropolitan, August 1915 In the last analysis, the most important elements in any man’s career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character. If he has not got it, then no law that the wit of man can devise, no administration of the law by the boldest and strongest executive, will avail to help him. We must have the right kind of character—character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, a good husband—that makes a man a good neighbor. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910 61

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Children No quality in a race atones for the failure to produce an abundance of healthy children. — Review of Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay, in Forum, January 1897 The nation’s most valuable asset is the children; for the children are the nation of the future. All people alive to the nation’s need should join together to work for the moral, spiritual, and physical welfare of the children in all parts of our land. —Address to the National Editorial Association, at Jamestown, Virginia, June 10, 1907

Citizens It ought to be axiomatic in this country that every man must devote a reasonable share of his time to doing his duty in the political life of the community. —“The Manly Virtues and Practical Politics,” Forum, July 1894 The first lesson to be learned by every citizen who desires to bring about a higher life in our American cities is that he must take an active part in managing the affairs of his own city. He has got to take some little trouble to do this, but if he is worth his salt, and possesses that healthy combativeness which ought to be aroused in every decent man by the insolence of evil, he will soon find municipal politics extremely interesting. —“The Higher Life of American Cities,” Outlook, December 21, 1895 62

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt The good citizen is the man who, whatever his wealth or his poverty, strives manfully to do his duty to himself, to his family, to his neighbor, to the state; who is incapable of the baseness which manifests itself either in arrogance or envy, but who while demanding justice for himself is no less scrupulous to offer justice to others. —Address at the New York State Fair, Syracuse, September 7, 1903 However refined and virtuous a man may be, he is yet entirely out of place in the American body politic unless he is himself of sufficiently coarse fiber and virile character to be more angered than hurt by an insult or injury; the timid good form a most useless as well as a most despicable portion of the community. . . . Many cultured men neglect their political duties simply because they are too delicate to have the element of “strike back” in their natures, and because they have an unmanly fear of being forced to stand up for their own rights when threatened with abuse or insult. —“Machine Politics in New York City,” Century, November 1886 Every citizen should be taught, both in public and in private life, that while he must avoid brawling and quarrelling, it is his duty to stand up for his rights. He must realize that the only man who is more contemptible than the blusterer and bully is the coward. No man is worth much to the commonwealth if he is not capable of feeling righteous wrath and just indignation, if he is not stirred to hot anger by misdoing, and is not impelled to see justice meted out to the wrong-doers. No man is worth much anywhere if he does not possess both moral and physical courage. —“The Manly Virtues and Practical Politics,” Forum, July 1894 In the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty, 63

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt first in the ordinary, everyday affairs of life, and next in those great occasional crises which call for the heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910 If a man’s efficiency is not guided and regulated by a moral sense, then the more efficient he is . . . the more dangerous to the body politic. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910 Our first duty as citizens of the nation is owed to the United States, but if we are true to our principles, we must also think of serving the interests of mankind at large. In addition to serving our own country, we must shape the policy of our country so as to secure the cause of international right, righteousness, fair play and humanity. —Address at Lewiston, Maine, August 31, 1916 If the citizens can be thoroughly waked up, and a plain, naked issue of right and wrong presented to them, they can always be trusted. The trouble is that in ordinary times the self-seeking political mercenaries are the only persons who both keep alert and understand the situation; and they commonly reap their reward. —New York, 1891 It is exceedingly difficult to make a good citizen out of a man who cannot count upon some steadiness and continuity in the work which means to him his livelihood. —“Rural Life,” Outlook, August 27, 1910 Idle man is a curse to the community, and cannot be a good citizen. But neither can the man who is exhausted by incessant and excessive toil be a good citizen. Men who work thirteen hours a day, including Sunday, 64

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt week in and week out, simply have not the opportunity to develop themselves or to produce the kind of citizenship which it is absolutely essential for a democracy to possess if it intends to remain a real democracy. The eight-hour day is an ideal toward which we should strive. —“Nationalism and the Workingman,” Outlook, February 4, 1911 If there is an equality of rights, there is an inequality of duties. It is proper to demand more from the man with exceptional advantages than from the man without them. A heavy moral obligation rests upon the man of means and upon the man of education to do their full duty by their country. —“The College Graduate and Public Life,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1894 Each group of men has its special interests; and yet the higher, the broader, and deeper interests are those which apply to all men alike; for the spirit of brotherhood in American citizenship, when rightly understood and rightly applied, is more important than aught else. —Address at Labor Day picnic, Chicago, September 3, 1900 Americans should organize politically as Americans and not as bankers, or lawyers, or farmers, or wage-workers. —“Good Luck to the Anti-Bolshevists of Kansas,” Kansas City Star, September 12, 1918

Class Conflict (see also Industrial Relations) No republic can permanently exist when it becomes a republic of classes, where the man feels not the interest of the whole people, but 65

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt the interest of the particular class to which he belongs, or fancies that he belongs, as being of prime importance. —Address at Washington, November 22, 1904 Any movement based on that class hatred which at times assumes the name of “class consciousness” is certain ultimately to fail, and if it temporarily succeeds, to do far-reaching damage. “Class consciousness,” where it is merely another name for the odious vice of class selfishness, is equally noxious whether in an employer’s association or in a working man’s association. —Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1908 We can keep our government on a sane and healthy basis, we can make and keep our social system what it should be, only on condition of judging each man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth as a man. It is an infamous thing in our American life, and fundamentally treacherous to our institutions, to apply to any man any test save that of his personal worth, or to draw between two sets of men any distinction save the distinction of conduct, the distinction that marks off those who do well and wisely from those who do ill and foolishly. There are good citizens and bad citizens in every class as in every locality, and the attitude of decent people toward great public and social questions should be determined, not by the accidental questions of employment or locality, but by those deep-set principles which represent the innermost souls of men. —Address at the New York State Fair, Syracuse, September 7, 1903 [I]n the long run our safety lies in recognizing the individual’s worth or lack of worth as the chief basis of action, and in shaping our whole conduct, and especially our political conduct, accordingly. It is

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt impossible for a democracy to endure if the political lines are drawn to coincide with class lines. —“Fellow-Feeling as a Political Factor,” Century, January 1900 The real trouble with us is that some classes have had too much voice. One of the most important of all the lessons to be taught and to be learned is that a man should vote, not as a representative of a class, but merely as a good citizen, whose prime interests are the same as those of all other good citizens. The belief in different classes, each having a voice in the government, has given rise to much of our present difficulty; for whosoever believes in these separate classes, each with a voice, inevitably, even although unconsciously, tends to work, not for the good of the whole people, but for the protection of some special class—usually that to which he himself belongs. — Campaign speech at Carnegie Hall, New York City, March 20, 1912 We must now see that there never comes any spirit of class antagonism in this country, any spirit of hostility between capitalist and wage-worker, between employer and employed; and we can avoid the upgrowth of any such feeling by remembering always to treat each man on his worth as a man. Do not hold it for him or against him that he is either rich or poor. If he is a crooked man and rich, hold it against him, not because he is rich, but because he is crooked. If he is not a rich man and crooked, hold it against him, still because he is crooked. If he is a square man, no matter how much or how little money he has, stand by him because he is a square man. . . . Republics have flourished before now, and have fallen; and they have usually fallen because there arose within them parties that represented either the unscrupulous rich or the unscrupulous poor, and that persuaded

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt the majority of the people to substitute loyalty to the one class for loyalty to the people as a whole. —Address at Little Rock, Arkansas, October 25, 1905 Too often we see the business community in a spirit of unhealthy class consciousness deplore the effort to hold to account under the law the wealthy men who in their management of great corporations, whether railroads, street-railways, or other industrial enterprises, have behaved in a way that revolts the conscience of the plain, decent people. Such an attitude cannot be condemned too severely, for men of property should recognize that they jeopardize the rights of property when they fail heartily to join in the effort to do away with the abuses of wealth. —Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1908 There have been many republics in the past, both in what we call antiquity and in what we call the Middle Ages. They fell, and the prime factor in their fall was the fact that the parties tended to divide along the line that separates wealth from poverty. It made no difference which side was successful; it made no difference whether the republic fell under the rule of an oligarchy or the rule of the mob. In either case, when once loyalty to a class had been substituted for loyalty to the republic, the end of the republic was at hand. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910

Commonweal (see also Community) [I]n the long run, we all of us tend to go up or go down together. —Address at the New York State Fair, Syracuse, September 7, 1903 68

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt [W]hen next our system of taxation is revised, the national government should impose a graduated inheritance tax, and, if possible, a graduated income tax. The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1906 One great problem that we have before us is to preserve the rights of property; and these can only be preserved if we remember that they are in less jeopardy from the socialist and the anarchist than from the predatory man of wealth. It has become evident that to refuse to invoke the power of the nation to restrain the wrongs committed by the man of great wealth who does evil is not only to neglect the interests of the public, but is to neglect the interests of the man of means who acts honorably by his fellows. —Address at Indianapolis, Indiana, May 30, 1907 We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910 We believe in property rights; normally and in the long run property rights and human rights coincide; but where they are at variance we are for human rights first and for property rights second. —“Nationalism and the Workingman,” Outlook, February 4, 1911 69

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt I shall protest against the tyranny of the majority whenever it arises, just as I shall protest against every other form of tyranny. But at present we are not suffering in any way from the tyranny of the majority. We suffer from the tyranny of the bosses and of the special interests, that is, from the tyranny of minorities. — Campaign speech at Philadelphia, April 10, 1912 [W]hen wealthy men . . . indulge in reckless speculation—especially if it is accompanied by dishonesty—they jeopardize not only their own future but the future of all their innocent fellow citizens, for they expose the whole business community to panic and distress. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1907 The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910 When laws like workmen’s compensation laws and the like are passed, it must always be kept in mind by the legislature that the purpose is to distribute over the whole community a burden that should not be borne only by those least able to bear it—that is, by the injured man or the widow and orphans of the dead man. —An Autobiography, 1913

Community (see also Commonweal) When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for 70

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt which we strive. Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help can avail him; but each man must remember also that he is indeed his brother’s keeper, and that while no man who refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to himself or anyone else, yet that each at times stumbles or halts, that each at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him. To be permanently effective, aid must always take the form of helping a man to help himself; and we can all best help ourselves by joining together in the work that is of common interest to all. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1901 It is hard to benefit men from whom we are sundered by aloofness of spirit. The best work must be done by men whose sympathies are so broad and keen as literally to give fellow-feeling, and the understanding that can come only from fellow-feeling. Such fellow-feeling means a realization of the fundamental equality of all of us in need, in shortcoming, in aspiration—in short, in the fundamental things of our common brotherhood. —“Church and the People,” Outlook, January 27, 1912 I need hardly say how earnestly I believe that men should have a keen and lively sense of their obligations in politics, of their duty to help forward great causes, and to struggle for the betterment of conditions that are unjust to their fellows, the men and women who are less fortunate in life. But in addition to this feeling there must be a feeling of real fellowship with the other men and women engaged in the same task, fellowship of work, with fun to vary the work; for unless there is this feeling of fellowship, of common effort on an equal plane for a common end, it will be difficult to keep the relations wholesome and natural. —An Autobiography, 1913 71

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Conduct The division between the worthy and the unworthy citizen must be drawn on conduct and character and not on wealth or poverty. —“Nationalism and Democracy,” Outlook, March 25, 1911

Congress (see Legislation)

Conservation (see also National Parks, Natural Resources, Wilderness) [W]hen, at the beginning of my term of service as president . . . I took up the cause of conservation, I was already fairly well awake to the need of social and industrial justice; and from the outset we had in view, not only the preservation of natural resources, but the prevention of monopoly in natural resources, so that they should inhere in the people as a whole. —“How I Became a Progressive,” Outlook, October 12, 1912 To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1907 The rights of the public to the natural resources outweigh private rights, and must be given its first consideration. —An Autobiography, 1913

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt Wise forest protection does not mean the withdrawal of forest resources, whether of wood, water, or grass, from contributing their full share to the welfare of the people, but, on the contrary, gives the assurance of larger and more certain supplies. The fundamental idea of forestry is the perpetuation of forests by use. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1901 Conservation, as I use the term, does not mean nonuse or nondevelopment. It does not mean tying up the natural resources of the states. It means the utilization of these resources under such regulation and control as will prevent waste, extravagance, and monopoly; but at the same time, not merely promoting, but encouraging such use and development as will serve the interests of the people generally. —Address to the Colorado Legislature, Denver, August 29, 1910 In utilizing and conserving the natural resources of the nation, the one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight. Unfortunately, foresight is not usually characteristic of a young and vigorous people, and it is obviously not a marked characteristic of us in the United States. Yet assuredly it should be the growing nation with a future which takes the long look ahead. —Address to the National Editorial Association, Jamestown, Virginia, June 10, 1907 We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt navigation. . . . It is time for us now as a nation to exercise the same reasonable foresight in dealing with our great natural resources that would be shown by any prudent man in conserving and widely using the property which contains the assurance of well-being for himself and his children. —Address at the Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources, Washington, May 13, 1908 The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910

Constitution (see also Democracy, Equality, Women’s Rights) The men who disbelieve in the rule of the people . . . treat the Constitution as a strait-jacket for restraining an unruly patient—the people. —“The Meaning of Free Government,” campaign speech at St. Louis, Missouri, March 28, 1912 No student of American history needs to be reminded that the Constitution itself is a bundle of compromises. —“The College Graduate and Public Life,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1894 It worked, primarily, because it was drawn up by practical politicians—by practical politicians who believed in decency, as well

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt as in common sense. If they had been a set of excellent theorists, they would have drawn up a constitution which would have commended itself to other excellent theorists, but which would not have worked. If they had been base, corrupt men, mere opportunists, men who lacked elevating ideals, dishonest, cowardly, they would have drawn up a document that would not have worked at all. —Address at Trinity Methodist Church, Newburgh, New York, February 28, 1900 All constitutions, those of the states no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights. . . . The object of every American constitution worth calling such must be what it is set forth to be in the preamble to the National Constitution, “to establish justice,” that is, to secure justice as between man and man by means of genuine popular selfgovernment. If the constitution is successfully invoked to nullify the effort to remedy injustice, it is proof positive either that the constitution needs immediate amendment or else that it is being wrongfully and improperly construed. —“A Charter of Democracy,” address at the Ohio Constitutional Convention, Columbus, February 21, 1912 States’ rights should be preserved when they mean the people’s rights, but not when they mean the people’s wrongs; not, for instance, when they are invoked to prevent the abolition of child labor. —Address at the Harvard Union, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 23, 1907 It is the people, and not the judges, who are entitled to say what their constitution means, for the constitution is theirs, it belongs to them

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt and not to their servants in office—any other theory is incompatible with the foundation principles of our government. —Introduction to William L. Ransom, Majority Rule and the Judiciary, 1912 In most positions the “division of powers” theory works unmitigated mischief. The only way to get good service is to give somebody power to render it, facing the fact that power which will enable a man to do a job well will also necessarily enable him to do it ill if he is the wrong kind of man. What is normally needed is the concentration in the hands of one man, or of a very small body of men, of ample power to enable him or them to do the work that is necessary; and then the devising of means to hold these men fully responsible for the exercise of that power by the people. —An Autobiography, 1913

Criticism (see also The Man in the Arena) I would not for one moment be understood as objecting to criticism or failing to appreciate its importance. . . . But it behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic, important though it is, is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does the things, and not by the man who talks about how they ought or ought not to be done. —“The Manly Virtues and Practical Politics,” Forum, July 1894 The prime thing that every man who takes an interest in politics should remember is that he must act, and not merely criticize the actions of others. It is not the man who sits by his fireside reading his evening paper, and saying how bad our politics and politicians are, 76

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt who will ever do anything to save us; it is the man who goes out into the rough hurly-burly of the caucus, the primary, and the political meeting, and there faces his fellows on equal terms. —“The Manly Virtues and Practical Politics,” Forum, July 1894 The politician who cheats or swindles, or the newspaper man who lies in any form, should be made to feel that he is an object of scorn for all honest men. We need fearless criticism; but we need that it should also be intelligent. . . . Criticism which is ignorant or prejudiced is a source of great harm to the nation; and where ignorant or prejudiced critics are themselves educated men, their attitude does real harm also to the class to which they belong. —“The College Graduate and Public Life,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1894 To sit home, read one’s favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men’s doing. —“The Higher Life of American Cities,” Outlook, December 21, 1895 There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil . . . practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. . . . An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does not good, but very great harm. —“The Man with the Muck-Rake,” address at the laying of the cornerstone of the U.S. House of Representatives office building, Washington, April 14, 1906 77

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt It is the duty of every American citizen fearlessly, but truthfully, to criticize not only his Government but his people, for wrongdoing, or for failure to do what is right. —“The Ghost Dance of the Shadow Huns,” Kansas City Star, October 1, 1917 In the United States the people are all citizens, including its president. The rest of them are fellow citizens of the president. In Germany the people are all subjects of the Kaiser. They are not his fellow citizens, they are his subjects. This is the essential difference between the United States and Germany, but the difference would vanish if we now submitted to the foolish or traitorous persons who endeavor to make it a crime to tell the truth about the administration when the administration is guilty of incompetence or other shortcomings. . . . Such endeavor is itself a crime against the nation. Those who take such an attitude are guilty of moral treason of a kind both abject and dangerous. —“Citizens or Subjects?” Kansas City Star, April 6, 1918 Government by the people means that the people have the right to do their own thinking and to do their own speaking about their public servants. They must speak truthfully and they must not be disloyal to the country, and it is their highest duty by truthful criticism to make and keep the public servants loyal to the country. —“Citizens or Subjects?” Kansas City Star, April 6, 1918 We can rest assured that no man ever thinks better of us because we point out his salient defects; and no nation is ever won to a kindlier feeling toward us if we adopt toward it a tone which we would resent if adopted toward us. —Address to the Periodical Publishers’ Association, Washington, April 7, 1904 78

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Defense (see also International Relations, War) Let us speak courteously, deal fairly, and keep ourselves armed and ready. —Address at San Francisco, May 13, 1903 Intelligent foresight in preparation and known capacity to stand well in battle are the surest safeguards against war. —Preface, Hero Tales, written with Henry Cabot Lodge, 1895 I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dishonor. —Address at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, June 2, 1897 A nation should never fight unless forced to; but it should always be ready to fight. —Address at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, June 2, 1897 Autocracy may use preparedness for the creation of an aggressive and provocative militarism that invites and produces war; but in a democracy preparedness means security against aggression and the best guaranty of peace. —“Our Course in the Light of War’s Lessons,” New York Times, November 29, 1914 In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securing his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender 79

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community retain theirs. . . . So it is with nations. Each nation must keep well prepared to defend itself until the establishment of some form of international police power, competent and willing to prevent violence as between nations. —“International Peace,” Nobel Peace Prize address, Christiania, Norway, May 5, 1910

Democracy (see also Constitution) The true object of democracy should be to guarantee each man his rights, with the purpose that each shall thereby be enabled better to do his duty. —“Nationalism and Democracy,” Outlook, March 25, 1911 The noblest of all forms of government is self-government; but it is also the most difficult. —Annual Message to Congress, December 5, 1905 Under no form of government is it so necessary thus to combine efficiency and morality, high principle and rough common sense, justice and the sturdiest physical and moral courage, as in a republic. It is absolutely impossible for a republic long to endure if it becomes either corrupt or cowardly; if its public men, no less than its private men, lose the indispensable virtue of honesty, if its leaders of thought become visionary doctrinaires, or if it shows a lack of courage in dealing with the many grave problems which it must surely face, both at home and abroad, as it strives to work out the destiny meet for a mighty nation. —Inaugural Address as Governor of New York State, Albany, January 2, 1899 80

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt The more I see of the Czar, the Kaiser, and the Mikado, the better I am content with democracy, even if we have to include the American newspaper. —Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, June 16, 1905 A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy. —Address to the Colorado Legislature, Denver, August 29, 1910 I have scant patience with this talk of the tyranny of the majority. Wherever there is tyranny of the majority, I shall protest against it with all my heart and soul. But we are today suffering from the tyranny of minorities. It is a small minority that is grabbing our coal-deposits, our water-powers, and our harbor fronts. A small minority is battening on the sale of adulterated foods and drugs. It is a small minority that lies behind monopolies and trusts. It is a small minority that stands behind the present law of master and servant, the sweatshops, and the whole calendar of social and industrial injustice. —“The Right of the People to Rule,” campaign speech at New York City, March 20, 1912 The worth of our great experiment depends upon its being in good faith an experiment—the first that has ever been tried—in true democracy on the scale of a continent, on a scale as vast as that of the mightiest empires of the Old World. Surely this is a noble ideal, an ideal for which it is worthwhile to strive, an ideal for which at need it is worthwhile to sacrifice much; for our ideal is the rule of all the people in a spirit of friendliest brotherhood toward each and every one of the people. —“The Right of the People to Rule,” campaign speech at New York City, March 20, 1912 81

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt Self-government is incompatible with dishonest government; and a political democracy and a business oligarchy cannot permanently exist in the same country side by side. —Address at Philadelphia, March 13, 1913 If the people are not sovereign over their own officials, then we do not live in a real democracy. —Address at National Conference of Progressive Service, Portsmouth, Rhode Island, July 2, 1913 There can be no real political democracy unless there is something approaching an economic democracy. —“Two Noteworthy Books on Democracy,” Outlook, November 18, 1914 The democratic ideal must be that of subordinating chaos to order, of subordinating the individual to the community, of subordinating individual selfishness to collective self-sacrifice for a lofty ideal, of training every man to realize that no one is entitled to citizenship in a great free commonwealth unless he does his full duty to his neighbor, his full duty in his family life, and his full duty to the nation; and unless he is prepared to do this duty not only in time of peace but also in time of war. —Fear God and Take Your Own Part, 1916

Determination I honor beyond measure those who do their full duty . . . and all the more because the doing of duty generally means pain, hardship, 82

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt self-mastery, wearing effort, steady perseverance under difficulty and discouragement. —Letter to Hamlin Garland, July 19, 1903 At Valley Forge Washington and his Continentals warred not against the foreign soldiery, but against themselves, against all the appeals of our nature that are most difficult to resist—against discouragement, discontent, the mean envies and jealousies, and heart-burnings sure to arise at any time in large bodies of men, but especially sure to arise when defeat and disaster have come to large bodies of men. Here the soldiers who carried our national flag had to suffer from cold, from privation, from hardship, knowing that their foes were well housed, knowing that things went easier for the others than it did for them. And they conquered, because they had in them the spirit that made them steadfast, not merely on an occasional great day, but day after day in the life of daily endeavor to do duty well. —Address at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, June 19, 1904 In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of us is spend and be spent. It is little matter whether any one man fails or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of mankind. We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. If on this continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall have done nothing; and we shall do as little if we merely set the greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy the material well-being of all of us. —Campaign speech at New York City, March 20, 1912 83

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Education There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility. —Address at Abilene, Kansas, May 2, 1903 A heavy moral obligation rests upon the man of means and upon the man of education to do their full duty by their country. On no class does this obligation rest more heavily than upon the men with a collegiate education, the men who are graduates of our universities. Their education gives them no right to feel the least superiority over any of their fellow citizens; but it certainly ought to make them feel that they should stand foremost in the honorable effort to serve the whole public by doing their duty as Americans in the body politic. —“The College Graduate and Public Life,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1894 When in their earliest and most impressionable years Protestants, Catholics, and Jews go to the same schools, learn the same lessons, play the same games, and are forced, in the rough-and-ready democracy of boy life, to take each at his true worth, it is impossible later to make the disciples of one creed persecute those of another. —“Fellow-Feeling as a Political Factor,” Century, January 1900 The educated man is entitled to no special privilege, save the inestimable privilege of trying to show that his education enables him to take the lead in striving to guide his fellows aright. —Address at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, February 22, 1905 84

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt The white man, if he is wise, will decline to allow the Negroes in a mass to grow to manhood and womanhood without education. Unquestionably education such as is obtained in our public schools does not do everything toward making a man a good citizen; but it does much. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1906

Equality (see also Constitution, Democracy) The humblest among us, no matter what his creed, his birthplace, or the color of his skin, so long as he behaves in straight and decent fashion, must have guaranteed to him under the law his right to life and liberty, to protection from injustice, to the enjoyment of the fruits of his own labor, and to do his share in the work of self-government on the same terms with others of like fitness. —“The Progressives and the Colored Man,” Outlook, August 24, 1912 Prejudice and bigotry never discriminate. If the bigot ever paused to discriminate, he would cease to be a bigot. —Quoted in John J. Leary Jr., Talks with T.R. The only safe principle upon which Americans can act is that of “all men up,” not that of “some men down.” —Address to the Republican Club of the City of New York, February 13, 1905 Fundamentally, our chief problem may be summed up as the effort to make men, as nearly as they can be made, both free and equal; the freedom and equality necessarily resting on a basis of justice and 85

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt brotherhood. It is not possible, with the imperfections of mankind, ever wholly to achieve such an ideal, if only for the reason that the shortcomings of men are such that complete and unrestricted individual liberty would mean the negation of even approximate equality, while a rigid and absolute equality would imply the destruction of every shred of liberty. Our business is to secure a practical working combination between the two. —“The Progressives, Past and Present,” Outlook, September 3, 1910 This government is based upon the fundamental idea that each man, no matter what his occupation, his race, or his religious belief, is entitled to be treated on his worth as a man, and neither favored nor discriminated against because of any accident in his position. —Letter to Joseph Gurney Cannon, September 12, 1904 It is a good thing that the guard around the tomb of Lincoln should be composed of colored soldiers. It was my own good fortune at Santiago to serve beside colored troops. A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterward. —Address at the Lincoln Monument, Springfield, Illinois, June 4, 1903 The attitude of the North toward the Negro is far from what it should be and there is need that the North also should act in good faith upon the principle of giving to each man what is justly due him, of treating him on his worth as a man, granting him no special favors, but denying him no proper opportunity for labor and the reward of labor. —Address at Lincoln Club dinner, New York City, February 13, 1905 86

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt I have not been able to think out any solution of the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent, but of one thing I am sure, and that is that inasmuch as he is here . . . the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have. I say I am “sure” that this is the right solution. Of course I know that we see through a glass dimly, and, after all, it may be that I am wrong; but if I am, then all my thoughts and beliefs are wrong, and my whole way of looking at life is wrong. —Letter to Albion W. Tourgée, November 8, 1901

Experimentation It is far better to try experiments, even when we are not certain how these experiments will turn out, or when we are certain that the proposed plan contains elements of folly as well as elements of wisdom. Better “trial and error” than no trial at all. —The Foes of Our Own Household, 1917

Extremism (see also Reactionaries) The absolute prerequisite for successful self-government in any people is the power of self-restraint which refuses to follow either the wild-eyed extremists of radicalism or the dull-eyed extremists of reaction. Either set of extremists will wreck the nation. —“Good Luck to the Anti-Bolshevists of Kansas,” Kansas City Star, September 12, 1918 87

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt [W]e must realize that the reactionaries among us are the worst foes of order, and the revolutionaries the worst foes of liberty; and unless we can preserve both order and liberty the republic is doomed. —The Great Adventure, 1918 If demagogues or ignorant enthusiasts who are misled by demagogues, could succeed in destroying wealth, they would, of course, simply work the ruin of the entire community, and, first of all, of the unfortunates for whom they profess to feel an especial interest. But the very existence of unreasoning hostility to wealth should make us all the more careful in seeing that wealth does nothing to justify such hostility. — Gubernatorial Message to the New York State Legislature, Albany, May 22, 1899 Violent excess is sure to provoke violent reaction; and the worst possible policy for our country would be one of violent oscillation between reckless upsetting of property rights, and unscrupulous greed manifested under pretense of protecting those rights. —“The Progressives, Past and Present,” Outlook, September 3, 1910

Fairness (see Justice, Square Deal )

Family Life (see also Fatherhood, Marriage, Motherhood ) [N]o form of happiness on the earth, no form of success of any kind . . . approaches the happiness of the husband and the wife who 88

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt are married lovers and the father and mother of plenty of healthy children. —“Race Decadence,” Outlook, April 8, 1911 The fundamental instincts are not only the basic but also the loftiest instincts in human nature. The qualities that make men and women eager lovers, faithful, duty-performing, hard-working husbands and wives, and wise, devoted fathers and mothers stand at the foundations of all possible social welfare, and also represent the loftiest heights of human happiness and usefulness. —“Birth Control—From the Positive Side,” Metropolitan, October 1917 A man must first care for his own household before he can be of use to the state. But no matter how well he cares for his household, he is not a good citizen unless he also takes thought of the state. —“Nationalism and International Relations,” Outlook, April 1, 1911

Fatherhood (see also Children, Family Life) There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful businessman, or railroad man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a president, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison. —An Autobiography, 1913 89

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Foreign Policy (see International Relations)

Freedom (see Liberty)

Governing [U]nder our form of government, no man can accomplish anything by himself; he must work in combination with others. —“Phases of State Legislation,” Century, April 1885 No man can render the highest service unless he can act in combination with his fellows, which means a certain amount of give-and-take between him and them. —An Autobiography, 1913 Public men have great temptations. They are always obliged to compromise in order to do anything at all. —Quoted in John Morton Blum, The Republican Roosevelt No man ever really learned from books how to manage a governmental system . . . if he has never done anything but study books he will not be a statesman at all. —“The College Graduate and Public Life,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1890 The man who, in the long run, will count for most in bettering municipal life is the man who actually steps down into the hurly-burly, who is not frightened by the sweat and the blood, and the blows of friends and foes. —“The Higher Life of American Cities,” Outlook, December 21, 1895

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt The bulk of government is not legislation but administration. — Quoted in John Morton Blum, The Republican Roosevelt What is needed is common honesty, common sense, and common courage. We need the minor, the humdrum, the practical virtues—the commonplace virtues that are absolutely essential if we are to make this city what it should be. If these virtues are lacking, no amount of cleverness will answer. —Address to the Good Government Club, New York City, April 15, 1897 Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time, and if a country lets the time for wise action pass, it may bitterly repent when a generation later it strives under disheartening difficulties to do what could have been done so easily if attempted at the right moment. —Letter to Edward Grey, November 15, 1913

Government The object of government is the welfare of the people. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910 The ends of good government in our democracy are to secure by genuine popular rule a high average of moral and material well-being among our citizens. —“A Charter of Democracy,” address at the Ohio Constitutional Convention, Columbus, February 21, 1912

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt Unless this is in truth a government of, by, and for the people, then both historically and in world interest our national existence loses most of its point. —“Nationalism and Popular Rule,” Outlook, January 21, 1911 [T]he people have the right to rule themselves, and can do so better than any outsiders can rule them, and . . . it is their duty so to rule in a spirit of justice toward every man and every woman within our borders, and to use the Government, so far as possible, as an instrument for obtaining not merely political but industrial justice. —Address accepting the presidential nomination of the National Progressive Party, Chicago, June 22, 1912 I advocate genuine popular rule in nation, in state, in city, in county, as offering the best possible means for eliminating special privilege alike in politics and in business, and for getting a genuine equality of opportunity for every man to show the stuff there is in him. I do not demand equality of reward. There is wide inequality of service, and where this is the case it is but just that there should be inequality of reward. . . . But I do ask that we endeavor so to shape our governmental policy as to bring about a measurable equality of opportunity for all men and all women so as to do justice to man and to woman, to big and to little, to rich and to poor. . . . In our government we cannot permanently succeed unless the people really do rule. —“The Meaning of Free Government,” campaign speech at St. Louis, Missouri, March 28, 1912 So long as governmental power existed exclusively for the king and not at all for the people, then the history of liberty was a history of the limitation of governmental power. But now the governmental power rests in the people, and the kings who enjoy privilege are the kings 92

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt of the financial and industrial world; and what they clamor for is the limitation of governmental power, and what the people sorely need is the extension of governmental power. . . .The people of the United States have but one instrument which they can efficiently use against the colossal combinations of business—and that instrument is the government of the United States (and of course in the several States the governments of the States where they can be utilized). —“Limitation of Governmental Power,” campaign speech at San Francisco, September 14, 1912 It behooves us to remember that men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others. If from lawlessness or fickleness, from folly or selfindulgence, they refuse to govern themselves, then most assuredly in the end they will have to be governed from the outside. —Address to the National Editorial Association, Jamestown, Virginia, June 10, 1907 [G]overnment should concern itself chiefly with the matters that are of most importance to the average man and average woman, and . . . it should be its special province to aid in making the conditions of life easier for these ordinary men and ordinary women. —“History and Tenets of the Progressive Party,” Century, October 1913

Great Nations [N]o nation can be really great unless it is great in peace, in industry, integrity, honesty. Skilled intelligence in civic affairs and industrial enterprises alike; the special ability of the artist, the man of letters, 93

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt the man of science, and the man of business; the rigid determination to wrong no man, and to stand for righteousness—all these are necessary in a great nation. But it is also necessary that the nation should have physical no less than moral courage. —Address at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, June 2, 1897 Reading through the pages of history you come upon nation after nation in which there has been a high average of individual strength, bravery, and hardihood, and yet in which there has been nothing approaching to national greatness, because these qualities were not supplemented by others just as necessary. With the courage, with the hardihood, with the strength, must come the power of self-restraint, the power of self-mastery, the capacity to work for and with others as well as for one’s self, the power of giving to others the love which each of us must bear for his neighbor, if we are to make our civilization really great. —Address at Topeka, Kansas, May 1, 1903 We are a great nation and we are compelled, whether we will or not, to face the responsibilities that must be faced by all great nations. It is not in our power to avoid meeting them. All that we can decide is whether we shall meet them well or ill. —Address at Lincoln Club dinner, New York City, February 13, 1899 [A] really great people, a people really capable of freedom and of doing mighty deeds in the world, must work out its own destiny, and must find men who will be its leaders—not its masters. —Oliver Cromwell, 1900

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt No nation ever amounted to anything if it did not have within its soul the power of fealty to a lofty ideal. —Address at Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California, March 24, 1911 We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good-will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wronging others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression. —Inaugural Address as President, March 4, 1905 A strong and wise people will study its own failures no less than its triumphs, for there is wisdom to be learned from the study of both. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1906 It is not worthwhile belonging to a big nation unless the big nation is willing when the necessity arises to undertake a big task. —“British Rule in Africa,” address at London, May 31, 1910

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk big; we must act big. —The Foes of Our Own Household, 1917

Great White Fleet (see Navy)

Historians The vision of the great historian must be both wide and lofty. —“History as Literature,” address to the American Historical Association, Boston, December 27, 1912 The true historian will bring the past before our eyes as if it were present. He will make us see as living men the hard-faced archers of Agincourt, and the war-torn spearmen who followed Alexander down beyond the rim of the known world. . . .We shall also see the supreme righteousness of the wars for freedom and justice, and know that the men who fell in those wars made all mankind their debtors. —“History as Literature,” address to the American Historical Association, Boston, December 27, 1912 [Francis] Parkman has done a great work [France and England in North America] which there is no need of anyone trying to do again. He has shown all the qualities of the historian, capacity for wide and deep research, accuracy in details combined with power to subordinate these details to the general effect, a keen perception of the essential underlying causes and results, and the mastery of a singularly clear, pure, and strong style. He has had a great subject, he has considered it philosophically, and has treated it with knowledge, with impartiality, and with enthusiasm. He 96

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt has now brought to an end the life task he set himself. He has produced a great book, and added to the sum of the successful efforts of his countrymen in a way that is given to but few of them to add. —“Francis Parkman’s Histories,” Independent, November 24, 1892 I always take in my saddle-pocket some volume . . . and among the most worn are the volumes of Macaulay. Upon my word, the more often I read him, whether the History or the Essays, the greater my admiration becomes. I read him primarily for pleasure, as I do all books; but I get any amount of profit from him, incidentally. Of all the authors I know I believe I should first choose him as the man whose writings will most help a man of action who desires to be both efficient and decent, to keep straight and yet be of some account in the world. —Letter to George Otto Trevelyan, September 10, 1909

History I do not believe that any man can adequately appreciate the world of today unless he has some knowledge of—a little more than a slight knowledge—some feeling for and of—the history of the world of the past. —Address at the University of California, Berkeley, March 23, 1911 If the proper study of mankind is man, then the proper study of a nation is its own history, and all true patriots should encourage in every way the associations which record the great deeds, and the successes and failures alike, of the forefathers of their people. —Address at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, January 1324, 1893 97

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt It is of little use for us to pay lip loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910

Human Nature But, in the final event, the statesman, and the publicist, and the reformer, and the agitator for new things, and the upholder of what is good in old things, all need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry. —An Autobiography, 1913

Hunters Whoever would really deserve the title must be able at a pinch to shift for himself, to grapple with the difficulties and hardships of wilderness life unaided, and not only to hunt; but at times to travel for days, whether on foot or on horseback, alone. . . . [Y]et often it is well to be with some old mountain hunter. . . .With such a companion one gets much more game, and learns many things by observation instead of by painful experience. —The Wilderness Hunter, 1893 The qualities that make a good soldier are, in large part, the qualities that make a good hunter. Most important of all is the ability to 98

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt shift for oneself, the mixture of hardihood and resourcefulness which enables a man to tramp all day in the right direction, and, when night comes, to make the best of whatever opportunities for shelter and warmth may be at hand. Skill in the use of the rifle is another trait; quickness in seeing game, another; ability to take advantage of cover, yet another; while patience, endurance, keenness of observation, resolution, good nerves, and instant readiness in an emergency, are all indispensable to a really good hunter. —Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, 1905 Not only should the hunter be able to describe vividly the chase and the life habits of the quarry, but he should also draw the wilderness itself and the life of those who dwell or sojourn therein. We wish to see before us the cautious stalk and the headlong gallop; the great beasts as they feed or rest or run or make love or fight; the wild hunting camps; the endless plains shimmering in the sunlight; the vast, solemn forests; the desert and the marsh and the mountain chain; and all that lies hidden in the lonely lands through which the wilderness wanderer roams and hunts game. —Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, 1905

Hunting In hunting, the finding and killing of the game is after all but a part of the whole. The free, self-reliant, adventurous life, with its rugged and stalwart democracy; the wild surroundings, the grand beauty of the scenery, the chance to study the ways and habits of the woodland creatures—all these unite to give to the career of the wilderness hunter its peculiar charm. —The Wilderness Hunter, 1893 99

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt It is a good thing for a man to be forced to show self-reliance, resourcefulness in emergency, willingness to endure fatigue and hunger, and at need to face risk. Hunting is praiseworthy very much in proportion as it tends to develop these qualities. — Foreword to Edward of Norwich, The Master of Game: The Oldest English Book on Hunting, 1904 With dangerous game, after a fair degree of efficiency with the rifle has been attained, the prime requisites are cool judgment and that kind of nerve which consists in avoiding being rattled. —An Autobiography, 1913

Ideals If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful. If, on the other hand, he does not work practically, with the knowledge that he is in the world of actual men and must get results, he becomes a worthless head-in-the-air creature, a nuisance to himself and to everybody else. —Letter to Kermit Roosevelt, January 27, 1915 The vital thing for the nation no less than the individual to remember is that, while dreaming and talking both have their uses, these uses must chiefly exist in seeing the dream realized and the talk turned into action. It is well that there should be some ideals so high as never to be wholly possible of realization; but unless there is a sincere effort measurably to realize them, glittering talk about them represents merely a kind of self-indulgence which ultimately means atrophy of will power. —“National Strength and International Duty,” address at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, November 1, 1917 100

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt One of our besetting sins as a nation has been to encourage in our public servants, in our speech-making leaders of all kinds, the preaching of impossible ideals. . . . Let us demand that we and they preach realizable ideals and that we and they live up to the ideals thus preached. —Fear God and Take Your Own Part, 1916

Immigrants Any discrimination against aliens is a wrong, for it tends to put the immigrant at a disadvantage and to cause him to feel bitterness and resentment during the very years when he should be preparing himself for American citizenship. —Address to the Knights of Columbus, New York City, October 12, 1915 It is foolish to imagine that the immigrant will automatically and of his own will be converted into an American by his mere presence among us, so long as he comes here in masses, and settles down among his own kind, as ignorant of our ways, our customs, and our institutions as he is. Nor is it right to criticize the immigrant because he forms what we call “foreign” colonies in our cities. It is natural that he should seek his kind. He does exactly what Americans do when they go abroad and settle in London, Paris, Berlin. . . . We should see to it that their kind becomes our kind. We won’t do it by calling them names, we won’t do it by maltreating them, and we won’t do it by neglecting them. —Quoted in John J. Leary Jr., Talks with T.R. Never under any condition should this nation look at an immigrant as primarily a labor unit. He should always be looked at primarily 101

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt as a future citizen and the father of other citizens who are to live in this land as fellows with our children and our children’s children. Our immigration laws, permanent or temporary, should always be constructed with this fact in view. —“Mobilize Our Man Power,” Kansas City Star, December 1, 1917 The Americans of other blood must remember that the man who in good faith and without reservations gives up another country for this must in return receive exactly the same rights, not merely legal, but social and spiritual, that other Americans proudly possess. —“Every Man Has a Right to One Country,” Kansas City Star, July 5, 1918

Individualism I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action. The individualism which finds its expression in the abuse of physical force is checked very early in the growth of civilization, and we of today should, in our turn, strive to shackle or destroy that individualism which triumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits the weak by craft instead of ruling them by brutality. We ought to go with any man in the effort to bring about justice and the equality of opportunity; to turn the tool user more and more into the tool owner; to shift burdens so that they can be more equitably borne. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910

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Industrial Relations (see also Business, Labor) It is essential that capitalist and wageworker should consult freely one with the other, should each strive to bring closer the day when both shall realize that they are properly partners and not enemies. —Annual Message to Congress, December 5, 1905 How to secure fair treatment alike for labor and for capital, how to hold in check the unscrupulous man, whether employer or employee, without weakening individual initiative, without hampering and cramping the industrial development of the country, is a problem fraught with great difficulties and one which it is of the highest importance to solve on lines of sanity and farsighted common sense as well as of devotion to the right. —Annual Message to Congress, December 2, 1902 We recognize the organization of capital and the organization of labor as natural outcomes of our industrial system. Each kind of organization is to be favored so long as it acts in a spirit of justice and of regard for the rights of others. Each is to be granted the full protection of the law, and each in turn is to be held to a strict obedience to the law; for no man is above it and no man below it. —Acceptance of the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, July 27, 1904 The employer has no more right to hog all the profits than the union has a right to insist upon wages that will permit of no profits. —Quoted in John J. Leary Jr., Talks with T.R.

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Industry The first charge on the industrial statesmanship of the day is to prevent human waste. The dead weight of orphanage and depleted craftsmanship, of crippled workers and workers suffering from trade diseases, of casual labor, of insecure old age, and of household depletion due to industrial conditions are, like our depleted soils, our gashed mountainsides and flooded river-bottoms, so many strains upon the national structure, draining the reserve strength of all industries and showing beyond all peradventure the public element and public concern in industrial health. —“Confession of Faith,” address at the Progressive National Convention, Chicago, August 6, 1912 The corporation or individual capitalist paying a starvation wage to an employee, and especially to a woman employee, is guilty of iniquity, and is an enemy of morality, of religion and of the state. Let us as a people face the fact that there must be a living wage for every employee; and that the employer who does not give it is a bad citizen. —“Cause of Decency,” Outlook, July 15, 1911 We should have in the national law-books and on the statute-books of every state . . . a far-reaching and thoroughgoing compensation act by which there should be paid automatically a certain specified sum to any man who is crippled in any industry such as railroading and to the kinsfolk of any man who loses his life therein. It should not be left to lawsuits. —“The Rights and Duties of Labor,” address at Freeport, Illinois, September 8, 1910

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International Relations (see also Business, Class Conflict, Labor) Is America a weakling, to shrink from the work of the great world powers? No! The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a race. —Letter to John Hay, June 7, 1897 The dealings of the United States with foreign powers should be considered from no partisan standpoint. Our party divisions affect ourselves purely; and when we are brought face to face with a foreign nation we should act as Americans merely. —“The Foreign Policy of President Harrison,” Independent, August 11, 1892 Force unbacked by righteousness is abhorrent. The effort to substitute for it vague declamation for righteousness unbacked by force is silly. The policeman must be put back of the judge in international law just as he is back of the judge in municipal law. —“Col. Theodore Roosevelt Writes on What America Should Learn from the War,” New York Times, September 27, 1914 [I]t would be a fatal thing for the great free peoples to reduce themselves to impotence and leave the despotisms and barbarisms armed. It would be safe to do so if there was some system of international police; but there is now no such system. —Letter to Andrew Carnegie, August 6, 1906

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt More and more the increasing interdependence and complexity of international political, and economic relations render it incumbent on all civilized and orderly powers to insist on the proper policing of the world. —Annual Message to Congress, December 2, 1902 If you get into trouble here you can call for the police; but if Uncle Sam gets into trouble, he has got to be his own policeman, and I want to see him strong enough to encourage the peaceful aspirations of other peoples in connection with us. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910 I never take a step in foreign policy unless I am assured that I shall be able eventually to carry out my will by force. — Quoted in Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography The business of statesmen is to try constantly to keep international relations better, to do away with causes of friction, and secure as nearly ideal justice as actual conditions will permit. —Letter to Baron Kentaro Kaneko, May 23, 1907 I do not think that the limitations of armaments will have any very great effect upon diminishing the likelihood of war, though it may have a little. The chief thing would be the relief of the strain upon the budgets of the different nations, and this is a very desirable end, for which I shall do whatever is in my power. —Letter to Edward Grey, February 28, 1907 [S]omething should be done as soon as possible to check the growth of armaments, especially naval armaments, by international agreement. No one power could or should act by itself; for it is eminently 106

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt undesirable, from the standpoint of the peace of righteousness, that a power which really does believe in peace should place itself at the mercy of some rival which may at bottom have no such belief and no intention of acting on it. But, granted sincerity of purpose, the great powers of the world should find no insurmountable difficulty in reaching an agreement which would put an end to the present costly and growing extravagance of expenditure on naval armaments. —“International Peace,” Nobel Peace Prize address, Christiania, Norway, May 5, 1910 More important than reducing the expense of the implements of war is the question of reducing the possible causes of war, which can most effectually be done by substituting other methods than war for the settlement of disputes. Of those other methods the most important which is now attainable is arbitration. . . . I hope to see adopted a general arbitration treaty among the nations; and I hope to see The Hague Court greatly increased in power and permanency. —Letter to Andrew Carnegie, April 5, 1907 The supreme difficulty in connection with developing the peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of any executive power, of any police power, to enforce the decrees of the court. —“International Peace,” Nobel Peace Prize address, Christiania, Norway, May 5, 1910 If it is impossible in the immediate future to devise some working scheme by which force shall be put behind righteousness in disinterested and effective fashion, where international wrongs are concerned, then the only alternative will be for each free people to keep itself in shape with its own strength to defend its own rights and interests, and meanwhile to do all that can be done to help forward 107

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt the slow growth of sentiment which is assuredly, although very gradually, telling against international wrong-doing and violence. —“Theodore Roosevelt Writes on Helping the Cause of World Peace,” New York Times, October 18, 1914 It is continually growing less and less possible for any great civilized nation to live purely for and by itself. Exactly as steam and electricity and the extraordinary agencies of modern industrialism have rendered more complex and more intimate the relations of all the individuals within each nation, so the same causes have rendered more complex and more intimate the relations of the various civilized nations with one another. —Address at a farewell dinner in New York City, on the eve of his trip to South America, October 3, 1913 It is idle to trust to alliances. Alliances change. Russia and Japan are now fighting side by side, although nine years ago they were fighting against one another. Twenty years ago Russia and Germany stood side by side. Fifteen years ago England was more hostile to Russia, and even to France, than she was to Germany. —America and the World War, 1915 Weakness invites contempt. Weakness combined with bluster invites both contempt and aggression. Self-respecting strength that respects the rights of others is the only quality that secures respect from others. If, in our foreign policy, we are weak, if we use lofty words at the same time that we commit mean or unworthy actions, and above all, if we fail to protect our own rights, we shall not secure the goodwill of any one, and we shall incur the contempt of other nations; and contempt of that kind is easily turned into active international violence. —Address at Kansas City, Missouri, May 30, 1916 108

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt It is the duty of wise statesmen, gifted with the power of looking ahead, to try to encourage and build up every movement which will substitute or tend to substitute some other agency for force in the settlement of international disputes. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910 It is our duty, so far as is now possible, so far as human nature in the present-day world will permit, to try to provide peaceful substitutes for war as a method for the settlement of international disputes. But progress in this direction is merely hindered by the folly that believes in putting peace above righteousness. . . . The greatest service this nation can render to righteousness is to behave with scrupulous justice to other nations, and yet to keep ready to hold its own if necessary. —“Peace of Righteousness,” Outlook, September 9, 1911 [W]e must never act wantonly or brutally, or without regard to the essentials of genuine morality—a morality considering our interests as well as the interests of others, and considering the interests of future generations as well as of the present generation. We must so conduct ourselves that every big nation and every little nation that behaves itself shall never have to think of us with fear, and shall have confidence not only in our justice but in our courtesy. —“The World War: Its Tragedies and Its Lessons,” Outlook, September 23, 1914 The United States cannot again completely withdraw into its shell. We need not mix in all European quarrels nor assume all spheres of interest everywhere to be ours, but we ought to join with the other civilized nations of the world in some scheme that in a time of great 109

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt stress would offer a likelihood of obtaining just settlements that will avert war. —“The League of Nations,” Kansas City Star, November 17, 1918

Justice (see also Square Deal) The first requisite for the welfare of any community is justice; not merely legal justice, but ethical justice, moral justice, the kind of justice meant by the ordinary man when he says that he wishes fair play or a square deal. . . .Without law and order there can be no permanent justice; but law and order are good only when used to bring about such justice. —“Nationalism and the Judiciary,” Outlook, February 25 and March 4, 1911

Kings Apparently what is needed in a constitutional king is that he shall be a kind of sublimated American vice president. . . . Politically he can never rise to, and socially he can never descend to, the level of the really able men of the nation. I cannot imagine a more appallingly dreary life for a man of ambition and power. —Letter to George Otto Trevelyan, October 1, 1911 I have been awfully well treated by kings; but in modern days a king’s business is not a man’s job. He is kept as a kind of national pet, treated with consideration and distinction, but not allowed to have any say in the running of the affairs of the national household. —Letter to Charles G. Washburn, March 5, 1913 110

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Labor (see also Class Conflict, Industrial Relations) I believe emphatically in organized labor. I believe in organizations of wage-workers. Organization is one of the laws of our social and economic development at this time. —Address to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Chattanooga, Tennessee, September 8, 1902 I believe in labor unions. If I were a wageworker I should certainly join one; and I am now an honorary member of one and am very proud of it. But if the members of labor unions indulge in rioting and violence, or behave wrongfully either to a capitalist or to another laborer or to the general public, I shall antagonize them just as fearlessly as under similar circumstances I should antagonize the biggest capitalist in the land. —Letter to Ray Stannard Baker, August 27, 1904 Wherever there is organized capital on a considerable scale I believe in the principle of organized labor and in the practice of collective bargaining, not merely as a desirable thing for the wage earners, but as something which has been demonstrated to be essential in the long run to their permanent progress. Where capital is organized, as it must be organized under modern industrial conditions, the only way to secure proper freedom—proper treatment—for the individual laborer is to have labor organized also. —Letter to Ray Stannard Baker, August 27, 1904 No worker should be compelled, as a condition of earning his daily bread, to risk his life and limb, or be deprived of his health, or have to work under dangerous and bad surroundings. Society owes the 111

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt worker this because it owes as much to itself. He should not be compelled to make this a matter of contract; he ought not to be left to fight alone for decent conditions in this respect. His protection in the place where he works should be guaranteed by the laws of the land. In other words, he should be protected during his working hours against greed and carelessness on the part of unscrupulous employers, just as outside of those working hours both he and his employer are protected in their lives and property against the murderer and the thief. —Address at Fargo, North Dakota, September 5, 1910 The laboring man, the wage worker, through a system of old-age insurance and insurance against accidents and involuntary unemployment must have his future made certain. —Address to the Republican Party of Maine, March 28, 1918 Hereafter in a very real sense labor should be treated, both as regards conditions of work and conditions of reward, as a partner in the enterprises in which he is associated; housing and living conditions must be favorable; effort must be made to see that the work is interesting, there must be insurance against old age, sickness, and involuntary employment. —Address to the Republican State Convention, Saratoga, New York, July 18, 1918 The prosperity of the wage-earning class is more important to the state than the prosperity of any other class in the community, for it numbers within its ranks two thirds of the people of the community. — Review of Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay, in Forum, January 1897

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt There are employers to-day who . . . speak as though they were lords of these countless armies of Americans, who toil in factory, in shop, in mill, and in the dark places under the earth. They fail to see that all these men have the right and the duty to combine to protect themselves and their families from want and degradation. They fail to see that the nation and the government, within the range of fair play and a just administration of the law, must inevitably sympathize with the men who have nothing but their wages, with the men who are struggling for a decent life, as opposed to men, however honorable, who are merely fighting for larger profits and an autocratic control of big business. —An Autobiography, 1913

Law All the law can do is to shape things that no injustice shall be done by one to another . . . so that each man shall be given the first chance to show the stuff that is in him. —Address at Kansas City, Missouri, May 1, 1903 This is a government of law, but it is also, as every government always has been and always must be, a government of men; for the worth of a law depends as much upon the men who interpret and administer it as upon the men who have enacted it. —“Nationalism and the Judiciary,” Outlook, March 4, 1911 [A] broadly effective and successful enforcement of law depends upon the support of an aroused and intelligent public opinion. —“A Special Message to Good Housekeeping Readers,” April 1909

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Lawsuits Lawsuits are objectionable on three different grounds. In the first place, there is always a chance that an excessive amount of damages may be recovered. . . . In the next place, there is always a chance that no damages will be recovered . . . and, finally, the only person certain to benefit from the suit is the lawyer, who is the only person who ought not to have any interest in it. —“The Rights and Duties of Labor,” address at Freeport, Illinois, September 8, 1910

Leadership There is always a tendency to believe that a hundred small men can furnish leadership equal to that of one big man. This is not so. —“The Hundred Men against the One Man,” Ladies’ Home Journal, May 1917 The people can do nothing unless they have a man to get behind. —Quoted in Owen Wister, Roosevelt, the Story of a Friendship [A] great and patriotic leader may, if the people have any capacity for self-government whatever, help them upward along their hard path by his wise leadership, his wise yielding to even what he does not like, and his wise refusal to consider his own selfish interests. —Oliver Cromwell, 1900 The first duty of a statesman is efficiently to work for the betterment of his country and for its good relations with the rest of the world. He must have high ideals, and in addition he must possess the practical sagacity and force that will enable him measurably to realize them. 114

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt If he does not possess the high ideals, then the greater his ability the more dangerous he is and the more essential it is to hunt him out of public life. . . . [F]ine aspirations, no matter how good, are useless if a man lacks either strength and courage or else the practical good sense which will enable him to face facts as they actually are and to work with his fellows under existing conditions. —“National Character and the Characters of National Statesmen,” Outlook, January 23, 1909 No man is fit for control who does not possess intelligence, selfrespect, and respect for the just rights of others. —The Foes of Our Own Household, 1917

Legislation (see also Senate) All that legislation can do, and all that honest and fearless administration of the laws can do is to give each man as good a chance as possible to develop the qualities he has in him, and to protect him so far as is humanly possible against wrong of any kind at the hands of his fellows. —Address at Jamestown, North Dakota, April 7, 1903 Legislation to be permanently good for any class must also be good for the nation as a whole, and legislation which does injustice to any class is certain to work harm to the nation. —Address at the New York State Fair, Syracuse, September 7, 1903 Remember what a legislative body is. It is a body whose first duty is to act, not to talk. The talking comes in merely as an adjunct to the 115

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt acting. Legislative government is, as its name implies, government by the enactment of laws after debate. The debate is to be used for the purpose of assisting legislation, for procuring wise legislation. The minute it is perverted from these legitimate and lawful ends, and used to stop all legislation, or any legislation of which the minority disapproves, it becomes improper and should be suppressed with a strong hand. . . . If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority. —Address to the Federal Club, New York City, March 6, 1891 [H]onesty and common sense are the two prime requisites for a legislator. —Letter to Jonas S. Van Duzer, November 20, 1883 I am criticized for interference with Congress. There really is not any answer I can make to this except to say that if I had not interfered we would not have had any rate bill, or any beef-packers’ bill, or any pure-food bill, or any consular reform bill, or the Panama Canal, or the Employers’ Liability Bill, or in short, any of the legislation which we have obtained during the last year. —Letter to Jacob Riis, June 26, 1906 I have a very strong feeling that it is a president’s duty to get on with Congress if he possibly can, and that it is a reflection upon him if he and Congress come to a complete break. For seven sessions I was able to prevent such a break. This session, however, they felt that it was safe utterly to disregard me because I was going out and my successor had been elected; and I made up my mind that it was just a case where the exception to the rule applied and that if I did not fight, and fight hard, I should be put in a contemptible position; while inasmuch as I was going out on the fourth of March I did not have to pay heed to 116

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt our ability to co-operate in the future. The result has, I think, justified my wisdom. I have come out ahead so far, and I have been full president right up to the end, which hardly any other president ever has been. —Letter to Theodore Roosevelt Jr., January 31, 1909

Liberty True liberty shows itself to best advantage in protecting the rights of others, and especially of minorities. —“Biological Analogies in History,” address at Oxford University, Oxford, England, June 7, 1910 No small part of the trouble that we have comes from carrying to an extreme the national virtue of self-reliance, of independence in initiative and action. It is wise to conserve this virtue and to provide for its fullest exercise, compatible with seeing that liberty does not become a liberty to wrong others. Unfortunately, this is the kind of liberty that the lack of all effective regulation inevitably breeds. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1907 Absolute liberty for each individual to do what he wishes in the modern industrial world means for the mass of men much what, a thousand years ago, similar liberty for the strong in a military age meant for the multitude in that day. . . . It is as necessary to shackle cunning in the present as ever it was to shackle physical force in the past. —“Nationalism and Special Privilege,” Outlook, January 28, 1911 Liberty has always walked between the twin terrors of Tyranny and Anarchy. They have stalked like wolves beside her, with murder in 117

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt their red eyes, ever-ready to tear each other’s throats, but even more ready to rend in sunder Liberty herself. —The Great Adventure, 1918 The distinctive features of the American system are its guarantees of personal independence and individual freedom; that is, as far as possible, it guarantees to each man his right to live as he chooses and to regulate his own private affairs as he wishes, without being interfered with or tyrannized over by an individual, or by an oligarchic minority, or by a democratic majority. —Thomas Hart Benton, 1886 If we of this generation destroy the resources from which our children would otherwise derive their livelihood, we reduce the capacity of our land to support a population, and so either degrade the standard of living or deprive the coming generations of their right to life on this continent. If we allow great industrial organizations to exercise unregulated control of the means of production and the necessaries of life, we deprive the Americans of today and of the future of industrial liberty, a right no less precious and vital than political freedom. Industrial liberty was a fruit of political liberty, and in turn has become one of its chief supports, and exactly as we stand for political democracy so we must stand for industrial democracy. —Annual Message to Congress, January 22, 1909 Our opponents are fond of saying that the governmental regulation which we advocate interferes with “liberty.” This is the argument of which certain judges and certain lawyers are most fond. It is the “liberty” which every reactionary court wishes to guarantee to the employer who makes money from the lifeblood of those he employs; the “liberty” of the starving girl to starve slowly in a sweat-shop, or to accept employment 118

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt where she hazards life and limb, at her own risk, in the service of others. Well, it was Lincoln who said that the reactionaries of his day “sighed for that perfect liberty—the liberty of making slaves of other people.” —Address at Lincoln Day Banquet, New York City, February 12, 1913

Life Life is not easy, and least of all is it easy for either the man or the nation that aspires to do great deeds. —Address at Lincoln Day Banquet, New York City, February 26, 1903 It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home. No father and mother can hope to escape sorrow and anxiety, and there are dreadful moments when death comes very near those we love, even if for the time being it passes by. But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living. —An Autobiography, 1913 With all my heart I believe in the joy of living; but those who achieve it do not seek it as an end in itself, but as a seized and prized incident of hard work well done and of risk and danger never wantonly courted, but never shirked when duty commands that they be faced. —The Great Adventure, 1918 Both life and death are part of the same Great Adventure. Never yet was worthy adventure worthily carried through by the man who put his personal safety first. —The Great Adventure, 1918 119

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt To love justice, to be merciful, to appreciate that the great mysteries shall not be known to us, and so living, face the beyond confident and without fear—that is life. —Quoted in John J. Leary Jr., Talks with T. R.

Abraham Lincoln Lincoln is my hero. He was a man of the people who always felt with and for the people, but who had not the slightest touch of the demagogue in him. . . . His unfaltering resolution, his quiet, unyielding courage, his infinite patience and gentleness, and the heights of disinterestedness which he attained whenever the crisis called for putting aside self, together with his far-sighted, hard-headed common sense point him out as just the kind of chief who can do most good in a democratic republic like ours. —Letter to George Otto Trevelyan, March 9, 1905 I never go into the White House and through the corridors and up the stairs . . . without thinking of old Lincoln . . . shambling, homely, with his strong, sad, deeply-furrowed face, all the time. I see him in the different rooms and in the halls. — Quoted in Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Times Lincoln to me has always been a living person, an inspiration and a help. I have always felt that if I could do as he would have done were he in my place, I would not be far from right. And at times when I have been troubled by some public question, I have tried to imagine Lincoln in my position and to do as he would have done. —Quoted in John J. Leary Jr., Talks with T.R. 120

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Literature (see also Authors, Books) [I]n any great work of literature the first element is great imaginative power. —“History as Literature,” address to the American Historical Association, Boston, December 27, 1912 It is a shallow criticism to assert that imagination tends to inaccuracy. . . .When we say that the great historian must be a man of imagination, we use the word as we use it when we say that the great statesman must be a man of imagination. Moreover, together with imagination must go the power of expression. The great speeches of statesmen and the great writings of historians can live only if they possess the deathless quality that inheres in all great literature. The greatest literary historian must of necessity be a master of the science of history, a man who has at his fingertips all the accumulated facts from the treasure-houses of the dead past. But he must also possess the power to marshal what is dead so that before our eyes it lives again. —“History as Literature,” address to the American Historical Association, Boston, December 27, 1912

Lynching All thoughtful men must feel the gravest alarm over the growth of lynching in this country, and especially over the peculiarly hideous forms so often taken by mob violence when colored men are the victims—on which occasions the mob seems to lay most weight, not on the crime, but on the color of the criminal. —Letter to W. T. Durbin, August 6, 1903 121

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt The members of the white race . . . should understand that every lynching represents by just so much a loosening of the bands of civilization; that the spirit of lynching inevitably throws into prominence in the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein. No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered. Every lynching means just so much moral deterioration in all the children who have any knowledge of it, and therefore just so much additional trouble for the next generation of Americans. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1906

The Man in the Arena (see also Action, Criticism) It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910

Marriage (see also Family Life)

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt No words can paint the scorn and contempt which must be felt by all right thinking men, not only for the brutal husband, but for the husband who fails to show full loyalty and consideration to his wife. . . . The partnership should be one of equal rights, one of love, of self-respect and unselfishness, above all a partnership for the performance of the most vitally important of all duties. —“Applied Idealism,” Outlook, June 28, 1913

Military (see Army, Navy, Rough Riders, Veterans)

Monopoly Where a trust becomes a monopoly the state has an immediate right to interfere. Care should be taken not to stifle enterprise or disclose any facts of a business that are essentially private; but the State for the protection of the public should exercise the right to inspect, to examine thoroughly all the workings of great corporations just as is now done with banks; and wherever the interests of the public demand it, it should publish the results of its examination. — Gubernatorial Message to the New York State Legislature, Albany, January 3, 1900 Beyond a question the great industrial combinations which we group in popular parlance under the name of trusts have produced great and serious evils. There is every reason why we should try to abate these evils and to make men of wealth, whether they act individually or collectively, bear their full share of the country’s burdens and keep as

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt scrupulously within the bounds of equity and morality as any of their neighbors. — Campaign speech at Grand Rapids, Michigan, September 7, 1900 So far as the great trusts are concerned, only the National Government can deal with them, for their economic power is achieved only by reason of their participation in interstate commerce. —“Nationalism and Democracy,” Outlook, March 25, 1911 [N]othing of importance is gained by breaking up a huge interstate and international industrial organization which has not offended otherwise than by its size. —“Trusts, the People, and the Square Deal,” Outlook, November 18, 1911 The very reason why we object to state ownership, that it puts a stop to individual initiative and to the healthy development of personal responsibility, is the reason why we object to an unsupervised, unchecked monopolistic control in private hands. —“The Thraldom of Names,” Outlook, June 19, 1909

Motherhood (see also Children, Family Life) The welfare of the woman is even more important than the welfare of the man; for the mother is the real Atlas, who bears aloft in her strong and tender arms the destiny of the world. —“Rural Life,” Outlook, August 27, 1910 124

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt The one way to honor this indispensable woman, the wife and mother, is to insist that she be treated as the full equal of her husband. The birth-pangs make all men the debtors of all women. —“The Parasite Woman,” Metropolitan, May 1916 Alone of human beings the good and wise mother stands on a plane of equal honor with the bravest soldier; for she has gladly gone down to the brink of the chasm of darkness to bring back the children in whose hands rests the future. —The Great Adventure, 1918 We have only begun to realize that the child’s mother, if wise and duty-performing, is the only citizen who deserves even more from the state than does the soldier; and that, if in need, she is entitled to help from the state, so that she may rear and care for her children at home. —The Foes of Our Own Household, 1917

Nationalism The law of self-preservation is the primary law for nations as for individuals. If a nation cannot protect itself under a democratic form of government, then it will either die or evolve a new form of government. —“Uncle Sam’s Only Friend Is Uncle Sam,” Metropolitan, November 1915 Nationalism corresponds to the love a man bears for his wife and children. Internationalism corresponds to the feeling he has for his neighbors generally. —Address at Lafayette Day exercises, New York City, September 6, 1918 125

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt Whatever may be the case in an infinitely remote future, at present no people can render any service to humanity unless as a people they feel an intense sense of national cohesion and solidarity. The man who loves other nations as much as he does his own, stands on a par with the man who loves other women as much as he does his own wife. —Fear God and Take Your Own Part, 1916 I believe in that ardent patriotism which will make a nation true to itself by making it secure justice for all within its own borders, and then so far as may be, aid in every way in securing just and fair treatment for all the nations of mankind. —Fear God and Take Your Own Part, 1916 We must resolutely refuse to permit our great nation, our great America, to be split into a score of little replicas of European nationalities, and to become a Balkan Peninsula on a larger scale. We are a nation, and not a hodge-podge of foreign nationalities. We are a people, and not a polyglot boarding-house. We must insist on a unified nationality, with one flag, one language, one set of national ideals. We must shun as we would shun the plague all efforts to make us separate in groups of separate nationalities. We must all of us be Americans, and nothing but Americans; and all good Americans must stand on an equality of consideration and respect, without regard to their creed or to the land from which their forebears came. —The Great Adventure, 1918 Why is it that our young artists think they have to go to France and paint Brittany fishermen? Why don’t they stay at home and paint Michigan lumbermen? They’re just as picturesque and they’re Americans. —Quoted in Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt To follow conventions merely because they are conventions is silly. . . . Let me give one small instance; the lion, because of the way in which his mane lends itself to use in stone, has always been a favorite for decorative purposes in architecture. He has in architecture become universally acclimatized and there is no objection to his use anywhere. But we happen to have here on this continent, in the bison with its shaggy frontlet and mane and short curved horns, a beast which equally lends itself to decorative use and which possesses the advantage of being our own. I earnestly wish that the conventions of architecture here in America would be so shaped as to include a widespread use of the bison’s head; and in a case like that of the New York Public Library there would be advantage from every standpoint in substituting two complete bisons’ figures for the preposterous lions, apparently in the preliminary stages of epilepsy, which now front on and disgrace Fifth Avenue. —Letter to American Institute of Architects, read at the Institute’s convention in Minneapolis, December 16, 1916 American literature must naturally develop on its own lines. Politically, Americans, unlike Canadians and Australians, are free from the colonial spirit which accepts, as a matter of course, the inferiority of the colonist as compared to the man who stays at home in the mother country. We are not entirely free as yet, however, from this colonial idea in matters social and literary. Sometimes it shows itself in an uneasy self-consciousness, whether of self-assertion or self-depreciation; but it always tacitly admits the assumption that American literature should in some way be tried by the standard of contemporary British literature. — Review of Brander Matthews, An Introduction to the Study of American Literature, in Bookman, February 1896

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National Parks (see also Conservation, Wilderness) There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred. —Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, 1905 In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country—to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. . . . I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you. —Address at the Grand Canyon, May 6, 1903 The only way that the people as a whole can secure to themselves and their children the enjoyment in perpetuity of what the Yellowstone Park has to give is by assuming the ownership in the name of the nation and by jealously safeguarding and preserving the scenery, the forests, and the wild creatures. —Address at the laying of the cornerstone of the gateway to Yellowstone Park, Gardiner, Montana, April 24, 1903 128

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Natural Resources The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wantonly destroyed great works of art, or sat slothfully by while they were destroyed. We have passed that stage. We treasure pictures and sculptures. We regard Attic temples and Roman triumphal arches and Gothic cathedrals as of priceless value. But we are, as a whole, still in that low state of civilization where we do not understand that it is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird. Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumpinggrounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals—not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people were awakening. —“Our Vanishing Wild Life,” Outlook, January 25, 1913 We of an older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted. —A message to the schoolchildren of the United States, April 15, 1907 If in a given community unchecked popular rule means unlimited waste and destruction of the natural resources—soil, fertility, waterpower, forests, game, wild life generally—which by right belong as much to subsequent generations as to the present generation, then it 129

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt is sure proof that the present generation is not yet really fit . . . to exercise the high and responsible privilege of a rule which shall be both by the people and for the people. The term “for the people” must always include the people unborn as well as the people now alive, or the democratic ideal is not realized. —A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open, 1916

Navy Thank Heaven we have the navy in good shape. It is high time, however, that it should go on a cruise around the world.* In the first place I think it will have a pacific effect to show that it can be done; and in the next place, after talking thoroughly over the situation with the naval board I became convinced that it was absolutely necessary for us to try in time of peace to see just what we could do in the way of putting a big battle fleet in the Pacific, and not make the experiment in time of war. —Letter to Elihu Root, July 13, 1907 *Roosevelt ordered the battleships painted white, and the Great White Fleet began its cruise in December 1907. It returned in February 1909. No nation regarded the cruise as fraught with any menace of hostility to itself; and yet every nation accepted it as a proof that we were not only desirous ourselves to keep the peace, but able to prevent the peace being broken at our expense. . . . The success of the cruise, performed as it was without a single accident, immeasurably raised the prestige, not only of our fleet, but of our nation; and was a distinct help to the cause of international peace. —“Pioneer Spirit and American Problems,” Outlook, September 10, 1910 130

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt I was talking softly to Japan and, in the fleet, was letting it see my big stick. — Quoted in John J. Leary Jr., Talks with T.R. In my own judgment the most important service that I rendered to peace was the voyage of the battle fleet round the world. —An Autobiography, 1913

Panama Canal The Panama Canal I naturally take special interest in, because I started it. If I had acted strictly according to precedent, I should have turned the whole matter over to Congress; in which case, Congress would be ably debating it at this moment, and the canal would be fifty years in the future. Fortunately the crisis came at a period when I could act unhampered. Accordingly I took the Isthmus, started the canal, and then left Congress—not to debate the canal, but to debate me. And in portions of the public press the debate still goes on as to whether or not I acted properly in taking the canal. But while the debate goes on the canal does too; and they are welcome to debate me as long as they wish, provided that we can go on with the canal. —Address at the University of California, Berkeley, March 23, 1911 [S]ome people say that I fomented insurrection in Panama. There had been innumerable revolutions in Panama prior to the time that I became President. While I was President I kept my foot down on these revolutions so that when the revolution referred to did occur, I did not have to foment it; I simply lifted my foot. — Quoted in Frederick S. Wood, Roosevelt as We Knew Him, 1927 131

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt The honor of the United States, and the interest not only of the United States but of the world, demanded the building of the Canal. The Canal could not have been built, it would not now have been begun, had our government not acted precisely as it did act in 1903. No action ever taken by the government, in dealing with any foreign power since the days of the [American] Revolution, was more vitally necessary to the well-being of our people, and no action we ever took was taken with a higher regard for the standards of honor, of courage, and of efficiency which should distinguish the attitude of the United States in all its dealings with the rest of the world. —“The Panama Blackmail Treaty,” Metropolitan, February 1915

Peace (see also International Relations, War) Washington loved peace. Perhaps Lincoln loved peace even more. But when the choice was between peace and righteousness, both alike trod undaunted the dark path that led through terror and suffering and the imminent menace of death to the shining goal beyond. We treasure the lofty words these men spoke. We treasure them because they were not merely words, but the high expression of deeds still higher; the expression of a serene valor that was never betrayed by a cold heart or a subtle and selfish brain. —Address at Cooper Union, New York City, November 3, 1916 Peace represents stored-up effort of our fathers or of ourselves in the past. It is not a means—it is an end. You do not get peace by peace; you get peace as the result of effort. If you strive to get it by peace you will lose it, that is all. —Address at Lincoln Club dinner, New York City, February 13, 1899 132

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt Peace can only be kept with certainty where both sides wish to keep it; but more and more the civilized peoples are realizing the wicked folly of war and are attaining that condition of just and intelligent regard for the rights of others which will in the end, we hope and believe, make the worldwide peace possible. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1901 Peace is a goddess only when she comes with sword girt on thigh. —“Washington’s Forgotten Maxim,” address at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, June 2, 1897 Until people get it firmly fixed in their minds that peace is valuable chiefly as a means to righteousness, and that it can only be considered as an end when it also coincides with righteousness, we can do only a limited amount to advance its coming on this earth. —Letter to Carl Schurz, September 8, 1905 World peace must rest on the willingness of nations with courage, cool foresight, and readiness for self-sacrifice to defend the fabric of international law. No nation can help in securing an organized, peaceful, and justice-doing world community until it is willing to run risks and make efforts in order to secure and maintain such a community. —Fear God and Take Your Own Part, 1916 The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to bring ever nearer the day when there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of justice. —Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904 The one permanent move for obtaining peace, which has yet been suggested, with any reasonable chance of attaining its object, is by an 133

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt agreement among the great powers, in which each should pledge itself not only to abide by the decisions of a common tribunal but to back with force the decisions of that common tribunal. The great civilized nations of the world which do possess force, actual or immediately potential, should combine by solemn agreement in a great World League for the Peace of Righteousness. —“Theodore Roosevelt Writes on Helping the Cause of World Peace,” New York Times, October 18, 1914

Philanthropy [N]ow and then the strongest may be in need of aid, and . . . for this reason alone, if for no other, the strong should always be glad of the chance in turn to aid the weak. —“Civic Helpfulness,” Century, October 1900 This spirit of brotherhood recognizes of necessity both the need of self-help and also the need of helping others in the only way which ever ultimately does great good, that is, of helping them to help themselves. Every man of us needs such help at some time or other, and each of us should be glad to stretch out his hand to a brother who stumbles. —Address to the Young Men’s Christian Association, New York City, December 30, 1900 The highest type of philanthropy is that which springs from the feeling of brotherhood, and which, therefore, rests on the self-respecting, healthy basis of mutual obligation and common effort. The best way

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt to raise anyone is to join with him in an effort whereby both you and he are raised by each helping the other. —“Reform through Social Work,” McClure’s, March 1901 The only effective way to help any man is to help him to help himself. —“Biological Analogies in History,” address at Oxford University, June 7, 1910

Politicians Unless a man believes in applied morality he is certain to be merely a noxious public servant. —“The Higher Life of American Cities,” Outlook, December 21, 1895 The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all. —Address at the New York State Fair, Syracuse, September 7, 1903 [M]y own experience has been that both my pleasure and my usefulness in any office depended absolutely upon my refusal to let myself get to thinking about my own future political advancement; for I have always found that such thought merely tended to hamper me and impair my usefulness. —Letter to James W. Wadsworth Jr., January 3, 1905

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt It is a dreadful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office. —Annual Message to Congress, December 2, 1906 Each community has the kind of politicians that it deserves. . . . Those men represent its virtue or they represent its vice, or, what is more common, they represent its gross and culpable indifference. —Address to the Independent Club, Buffalo, New York, May 15, 1899 A nation must be judged in part by the character of its public men, not merely by their ability but by their ideals and the measure in which they realize their ideals. —“National Character and the Characters of National Statesmen,” Outlook, January 23, 1909 If you habitually suffer your public representatives to be dishonest you will gradually lose all power of insisting upon honesty. If you let them continually do little acts that are not quite straight you will gradually induce in their minds the mental attitude which will make it hopeless to get from them anything that is not crooked. —Address at Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California, March 24, 1911 We need to make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910 I have been accused of many things when I was an executive officer, but never of lack of independence. No public servant who is worth 136

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt his salt should hesitate to stand by his conscience, and if necessary, to surrender his office rather than to yield his conscientious conviction in a case of any importance. —Address at a meeting of the Civic Forum and the Child Welfare League, New York City, October 20, 1911 Often much of the best service that is rendered in Congress must be done without any hope of approbation or reward. The measures that attract most attention are frequently not those of most lasting importance; and even where they are of such importance that attention is fixed upon them, the interested public may not appreciate the difference between the man who merely records his vote for a bill and the other who throws his whole strength into the contest to secure its passage. A man must have in him a strong and earnest sense of duty and the desire to accomplish good for the commonwealth, without regard to the effect upon himself, to be useful in Congress. —“Harvard Men in Politics,” Harvard Advocate, October 1892 The squaring of one’s deeds with one’s words is the quality above all others which we should exact from public men and from the spokesmen of great parties. —Address at Akron, Ohio, September 23, 1899 [T]here must be no discrimination for or against any man because of his social standing. On the one side, there is nothing to be made out of a political organization which draws an exclusive social line, and on the other it must be remembered that it is just as un-American to vote against a man because he is rich as to vote against him because he is poor. . . . In short, to do good work in politics, the men who organize must organize wholly without regard to whether their associates were born here or abroad, whether they are Protestants or Catholics, 137

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt Jews or Gentiles, whether they are bankers or butchers, professors or day-laborers. —“The Manly Virtues and Practical Politics,” Forum, July 1894

Political Campaigns It shows a thoroughly unhealthy state of mind when the public pardons with a laugh failure to keep a distinct pledge, on the ground that a politician cannot be expected to confine himself to the truth when on the stump or the platform. . . . Of course matters may so change that it may be impossible for him, or highly inadvisable for the country, that he should try to do what he in good faith said he was going to do. But the necessity for the change should be made very evident, and it should be well understood that such a case is the exception and not the rule. —“Promise and Performance,” Outlook, July 28, 1900 A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910 All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders’ money for such purposes. —Annual Message to Congress, December 5, 1905 I told him [Taft] that he must treat the political audience as one coming not to see an etching but a poster. He must, therefore, have 138

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt streaks of blue, yellow, and red to catch the eye, and eliminate all the fine lines and soft colors. — Quoted in Lawrence F. Abbott, ed., The Letters of Archie Butt [T]he presidential office tends to put a premium upon a man’s keeping out of trouble rather than upon his accomplishing results. If a man has a very decided character, has a strongly accentuated career, it is normally the case of course that he makes ardent friends and bitter enemies; and unfortunately human nature is such that more enemies will leave their party because of enmity to its head than friends will come in from the opposite party because they think well of that same head. In consequence, the dark horse, the neutral-tinted individual, is very apt to win against the man of pronounced views and active life. The electorate is very apt to vote with its back to the future! —Letter to George Otto Trevelyan, May 28, 1904

Political Parties Not only should the platform be right, but it should be so clearly drawn as to make the intentions of those who draw it perfectly understood by the average man; it should deal wisely and boldly with the new issues confronting our people; and, finally, it should scrupulously refrain from promising anything that cannot be performed, and should clearly show that it intends as a matter of honorable obligation to carry out every promise made. —“Platform Insincerity,” Outlook, July 27, 1912

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt In politics, as in life generally, the strife is well-nigh unceasing and breathing spots are few. Even if the struggle results in a victory, it usually only opens the way for another struggle. —Letter to Theodore Roosevelt Jr., January 29, 1904 On the great scale the only practical politics is honest politics. —Address at Trinity Methodist Church, Newburgh, New York, February 28, 1900 [The Federalist] is the greatest book of the kind that has ever been written. Hamilton, Madison, and Jay would have been poorly equipped for writing it if they had not possessed an extensive acquaintance with literature, and in particular if they had not been careful students of political literature; but the great cause of the value of their writings lay in the fact that they knew by actual work and association what practical politics meant. —“The College Graduate and Public Life,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1894

Pollution The United States at this moment occupies a lamentable position as being perhaps the chief offender among civilized nations in permitting the destruction and pollution of nature. —“Our Vanishing Wild Life,” Outlook, January 25, 1913

Posterity We are apt to speak of the judgment of “posterity” as final; but “posterity” is no single entity, and the “posterity” of one age has no 140

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt necessary sympathy with the judgments of the “posterity” that preceded it by a few centuries. —“Pigskin Library,” Outlook, April 30, 1910 The wisdom of one generation may seem the folly of the next. —“History as Literature,” address to the American Historical Association, Boston, December 27, 1912 The sons of all of us will pay in the future if we of the present do not do justice in the present. — Campaign speech at Louisville, Kentucky, April 3, 1912

Power (see also Politics) Our chief usefulness to humanity rests on our combining power with high purpose. Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity; and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking. —“Peace of Righteousness,” Outlook, September 9, 1911 Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. —Inaugural Address as President, March 4, 1905 The danger to American democracy lies not in the least in the concentration of administrative power in responsible and accountable hands. It lies in having the power insufficiently concentrated, so that no one can be held responsible to the people for its use. Concentrated power is palpable, visible, responsible, easily reached, quickly held to account. Power scattered through many administrators, many legislators, many 141

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt men who work behind and through legislators and administrators, is impalpable, is unseen, is irresponsible, cannot be reached, cannot be held to account. —Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1908 Public servants must be given ample power to enable them to do their work. Remember that. If you tie the hands of a public servant so that he cannot do ill, you tie his hands so that he cannot do well. . . . Leave his hands free. Give him the chance to do the job, and turn him out if he does not do the job well. —Address at the City Club, Los Angeles, March 21, 1911 [M]y power vanishes into thin air the instant that my fellow citizens who are straight and honest cease to believe that I represent them and fight for what is straight and honest; that is all the strength I have. —Address at Binghamton, New York, October 24, 1910 The people have nothing whatever to fear from giving any public servant power so long as they retain their own power to hold him accountable for his use of the power they have delegated him. —“A Charter of Democracy,” address at the Ohio Constitutional Convention, Columbus, February 21, 1912 I did not care a rap for the mere form and show of power; I cared immensely for the use that could be made of the substance. —An Autobiography, 1913

Prejudice (see Equality)

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Presidency The candidate is the candidate of a party; but if the president is worth his salt he is the president of the whole people. —Address at Little Rock, Arkansas, October 25, 1905 I have a perfectly defi nite philosophy about the presidency. I think it should be a very powerful office, and I think the president should be a very strong man who uses without hesitation every power that the position yields; but because of this very fact I believe that he should be sharply watched by the people, held to a strict accountability by them, and that he should not keep the office too long. —Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 19, 1908 [T]here inheres in the presidency more power than in any other office in any great republic or constitutional monarchy of modern times. —Letter to George Otto Trevelyan, June 19, 1908 My belief was that it was not only [the president’s] right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws. Under this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the president and the heads of the departments. I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power. In other words, I acted for the public welfare, I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition. —An Autobiography, 1913

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt [O]ccasionally great national crises arise which call for immediate and vigorous executive action, and . . . in such cases it is the duty of the president to act upon the theory that he is the steward of the people, and that the proper attitude for him to take is that he is bound to assume that he has the legal right to do whatever the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or the laws explicitly forbid him to do it. —An Autobiography, 1913 In theory the executive has nothing to do with legislation. In practice, as things now are, the executive is or ought to be peculiarly representative of the people as a whole. As often as not the action of the Executive offers the only means by which the people can get the legislation they demand and ought to have. —An Autobiography, 1913 What a place the presidency is for learning to keep one’s temper! I have every kind of attack; from the violent labor men, from the anarchists and socialists with a taste for murder, from the rich corporation men, from the factional Democrats, from the little rosewater, parlor performers, and from the sensation-seeking, scalawag, wouldbe reformers. —Letter to Kermit Roosevelt, June 17, 1906 Altogether, there are few harder tasks than that of filling well and ably the office of president of the United States. The labor is immense, the ceaseless worry and harassing anxiety are beyond description. But if the man at the close of his term is able to feel that he has done his duty well; that he has solved after the best fashion . . . the great problems with which he was confronted, and has kept clean and in good running order the governmental machinery of the mighty 144

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt Republic, he has the satisfaction of feeling that he has performed one of the great world-tasks. —“The Presidency,” The Youth’s Companion, November 6, 1902 One rather sad feature of the life of a president is the difficulty of making friends, because almost inevitably after a while the friend thinks there is some office he would like, applies for it, and when the President is obliged to refuse, feels that he has been injured. —“The Presidency,” The Youth’s Companion, November 6, 1902 I would rather not be called Excellency, and this partly because the title does not belong to me and partly from vanity! The president of the United States ought to have no title; and if he did have a title it ought to be a bigger one. Whenever an important prince comes here he is apt to bring a shoal of “excellencies” in his train. Just as I should object to having the simple dignity of the White House changed for such attractions as might lie in a second-rate palace, so I feel that the president of a great democratic republic should have no title but president. —Letter to George Otto Trevelyan, May 13, 1905 When hard times come it is inevitable that the president under whom they come should be blamed. There are foolish people who supported me because we had heavy crops; and there are now foolish people who oppose me because extravagant speculations, complicated here and there with dishonesty, have produced the inevitable reaction. —Letter to Hamlin Garland, November 23, 1907 The president is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, 145

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.* Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about anyone else. —“Sedition, A Free Press, and Personal Rule,” Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918 *Roosevelt’s sharp criticism of President Wilson’s leadership during World War I led the Post Office to warn the Star that such views might cost the paper its second-class mailing privileges. [M]ost of us enjoy preaching, and I’ve got such a bully pulpit! — Quoted in George Haven Putnam, “Roosevelt, Historian and Statesman,” introduction to the 1917 edition of Winning of the West, 1889 When people have spoken to me as to what America should do with its ex-presidents, I have always answered that there was one ex-president as to whom they need not concern themselves in the least, because I would do for myself. It would be to me personally an unpleasant thing to be pensioned and given some honorary position. I emphatically do not desire to clutch at the fringe of departing greatness. Indeed, to me there is something rather attractive, something in the way of living up 146

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt to a proper democratic ideal, in having a president go out of office just as I shall go, and become absolutely and without reservation a private man, and do any honorable work which he finds to do. —Letter to John St. Loe Strachey, November 28, 1908

Press I think that if there is one thing we ought to be careful about it is in regard to interfering with the liberty of the press. We have all of us at times suffered from the liberty of the press, but we have to take the good and the bad. I think we certainly ought to hesitate very seriously before passing any law that will interfere with the broadest public utterance. I think it is a great deal better to err a little bit on the side of having too much discussion and having too virulent language used by the press. —Address to the New York State Assembly, Albany, March 27, 1883 [O]ur newspapers, including those who professedly stand as representatives of the highest culture of the community, have been in the habit of making such constant and reckless assaults upon the characters of even very good public men, as to greatly detract from their influence when they attack one who is really bad. They paint every one with whom they disagree black. As a consequence the average man, who knows they are partly wrong, thinks they may also be partly right; he concludes that no man is absolutely white, and at the same time that no one is as black as he is painted; and takes refuge in the belief that all alike are gray. It then becomes impossible to rouse him to make an effort either for a good man or against a scoundrel. Nothing helps dishonest politicians as much as this feeling. —American Ideals, 1897 147

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt In Pilgrim’s Progress the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is fi lth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services than can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil. —“The Man with the Muck-Rake,” address at the laying of the cornerstone of the U.S. House of Representatives office building, Washington, April 14, 1906 The men with the muck-rake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck. —“The Man with the Muck-Rake,” address at the laying of the cornerstone of the U.S. House of Representatives office building, Washington, April 14, 1906 Yellow journalism . . . deifies the cult of the mendacious, the sensational, and the inane, and . . . throughout its wide but vapid field, does as much to vulgarize and degrade the popular taste, to weaken the popular character, and to dull the edge of the popular conscience, as any influence under which the country can suffer. These men sneer at the very idea of paying heed to the dictates of a sound morality; as one of their number has cynically put it, they are concerned merely with 148

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt selling the public whatever the public will buy—a theory of conduct which would justify the existence of every keeper of an opium den, of every foul creature who ministers to the vices of mankind. —“Why I Believe in the Kind of American Journalism for Which The Outlook Stands,” Outlook, March 6, 1909 I put as the first requisite of the man writing for the newspaper that he should tell the truth. Now, it is important that he should tell the whole truth, for there can be no greater service rendered than the exposure of corruption in either public life or in business, or in that intricate web of public life and business which exists too often in America today. . . . If an article is published in a magazine, exposing corruption, and the article tells the truth, I do not care what it is, the writer has rendered the greatest possible service by writing it; but I want to be certain that he is telling the truth. —Address at the Milwaukee Press Club, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 7, 1910 The editor, who stands as a judge in a community, should be one of the men to whom you would expect to look up, because his function as an editor makes him a more important man than the average merchant, the average business man, the average professional man can be. He wields great influence; and he cannot escape the responsibility of wielding it. —Address at the Milwaukee Press Club, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 7, 1910 The editor, the publisher, the reporter, who honestly and truthfully puts the exact facts before the public, who does not omit for improper reasons things that ought to be stated, who does not say what is not true, who does not color his facts so as to give false impressions, 149

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt who does not manufacture his facts, who really is ready, in the first place, to find out what the truth is, and, in the next place, to state it accurately—that man occupies one of the most honorable positions in the community. —Address at the Milwaukee Press Club, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 7, 1910 Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where the people are themselves free. — Quoted in Ralph Stout, ed., Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, 1921

Progressive Party (see also Reformers) We know that there are in life injustices which we are powerless to remedy. But we know also that there is much injustice which can be remedied. . . . We know that the long path leading upward toward the light cannot be traversed at once, or in a day, or in a year. But there are certain steps that can be taken at once. These we intend to take. Then, having taken these first steps, we shall see more clearly how to walk still further with a bolder stride. —“The Purpose of the Progressive Party,” campaign speech at New York City, October 30, 1912 We [Progressives] shall sedulously safeguard the rights of property and protect it from all injustice. But we hold with Lincoln that labor deserves higher consideration than capital. Therefore we hold that labor has a right to the means of life—that there must be a living wage. —“Minimum Wage,” Outlook, September 28, 1912

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt The Progressive Party in this country embodies the Progressive movement, the movement which concerns itself with the rights of all men and women, and especially with the welfare of all who toil. The Progressive Movement is greater than the Progressive Party; yet the Progressive Party is at present the only instrument through which that movement can be advanced. Our effort is to make this country economically as well as politically a genuine democracy. . . . Both our purposes and our principles are those of Abraham Lincoln and of the Republicans of his day. All we have done has been to apply these principles in actual fact to the living problems of today; instead of praising them as applied to the dead problems of half a century back, and repudiating them with abhorrence when they are invoked on behalf of the men, women and children who toil in the twentieth century. —Introduction to S. J. Duncan Clark, The Progressive Movement, 1913 We believe in the principle of a living wage. We hold that it is ruinous for all our people if some of our people are forced to subsist on a wage such that body and soul alike are stunted. —“History and Tenets of the Progressive Party,” Century, October 1913

Progressivism (see also Reform) Those of us who believe in Progressive Nationalism are sometimes dismissed with the statement that we are “radicals.” So we are; we are radicals in such matters as eliminating special privilege and securing genuine popular rule, the genuine rule of the democracy. But we are not overmuch concerned with matters of mere terminology.

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt We are not in the least afraid of the word “conservative,” and, wherever there is any reason for caution, we are not only content but desirous to make progress slowly and in a cautious, conservative manner. —“Nationalism and Progress,” Outlook, January 14, 1911 Every man who fights fearlessly and effectively against special privilege in any form is to that extent a Progressive. Every man who, directly or indirectly, upholds privilege and favors the special interests, whether he acts from evil motives or merely because he is puzzle-headed or dull of mental vision, or lacking in social sympathy, or whether he simply lacks interest in the subject, is a reactionary. — Campaign speech at Louisville, Kentucky, April 3, 1912 Progressives believe that the people have the right, the power, and the duty to protect themselves and their own welfare; that human rights are supreme over all other rights; that wealth should be the servant, not the master, of the people. We believe that unless representative government does absolutely represent the people it is not representative government at all. We test the worth of all men and all measures by asking how they contribute to the welfare of the men, women, and children of whom this nation is composed. . . . We hold it a prime duty of the people to free our government from the control of money in politics. For this purpose we advocate, not as ends in themselves, but as weapons in the hands of the people, all governmental devices which will make the representatives of the people more easily and certainly responsible to the people’s will. —“A Charter of Democracy,” address at the Ohio Constitutional Convention, Columbus, February 21, 1912

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt The ends of good government in our democracy are to secure by genuine popular rule a high average of moral and material well-being among our citizens. —“A Charter of Democracy,” address at the Ohio Constitutional Convention, Columbus, February 21, 1912 We [Progressives] are accused by our enemies of being hostile to business. So far is this from being true that we are the only true and real friends of business. The men of great wealth who are careless of the welfare of the average citizen of our country are laying up an evil harvest for their own children. It is not merely the part of justice, but the part of wisdom to remember that . . . the growth of misery in any one great class will ultimately make its baleful effects felt through all classes. We wish the business man to prosper, and, alone among the great parties, we propose a rational common-sense plan which will secure him prosperity at the same time that it secures us against possible wrongdoing by him. We hold that the right type of business man is the man who makes money by serving others, and if the service is great, we wish the reward to be great. We draw the line on conduct, not on size. We do not intend to destroy big business; where it is useful to the people we intend to keep it, but we intend so to supervise and control it that we can be sure that it will be useful. —Address at Philadelphia, March 13, 1913 We Progressives were fighting for elementary social and industrial justice, and we had with us the great majority of the practical idealists of the country. But we had against us both the old political organizations and ninety-nine per cent at the very least of the corporate wealth of the country, and therefore the great majority of the newspapers. Moreover we were not able to reach the hearts of the materialists, or

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt to stir the imagination of the well-meaning somewhat sodden men who lack vision and prefer to travel in a groove. We were fought by the Socialists as bitterly as by the representatives of the two old parties, and this for the very reason that we stand equally against government by a plutocracy and government by a mob. —Letter to Edward Grey, November 15, 1913

Promises A man is worthless unless he has in him a lofty devotion to an ideal, and he is worthless also unless he strives to realize this ideal by practical methods. He must promise, both to himself and to others, only what he can perform. —“Promise and Performance,” Outlook, July 28, 1900 The importance of a promise lies not in making it, but in keeping it. —An Autobiography, 1913

Prosperity Prosperity can only be lasting if it is based on justice, and it cannot be based on justice unless the small man, the farmer, the mechanic, the wage-worker generally, the clerk on a salary, the small business man, the retail dealer, have their rights guaranteed. — Campaign speech at Chicago, March 27, 1912 None of us can really prosper permanently if masses of our fellows are debased and degraded, if they are ground down and forced to live starved and sordid lives, so that their souls are crippled like their 154

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt bodies and the fine edge of their every feeling blunted. We ask that those of our people to whom fate has been kind shall remember that each is his brother’s keeper. . . .We believe that this country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in. —“The Case against the Reactionaries,” campaign speech at Chicago, June 17, 1912

Public Life There is every reason why a man should have an honorable ambition to enter public life, and an honorable ambition to stay there when he is in; but he ought to make up his mind that he cares for it only as long as he can stay in it on his own terms, without sacrifice of his own principles; and if he does thus make up his mind he can really accomplish twice as much for the nation, and can reflect a hundredfold greater honor upon himself, in a short term of service, than can the man who grows gray in the public employment at the cost of sacrificing what he believes to be true and honest. —Address to the Liberal Club, Buffalo, New York, January 26, 1893 Every man who is striving to do good public work is travelling along a ridge crest, with the gulf of failure on each side—the gulf of inefficiency on the one side, the gulf of unrighteousness on the other. All kinds of forces are continually playing on him, to shove him first into one gulf and then into the other; and even a wise and good man, unless he braces himself with uncommon firmness and foresight, as he is pushed this way and that, will find that his course becomes a pronounced zigzag instead of a straight line. —“Civic Helpfulness,” Century, October 1900 155

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt Undoubtedly good men in public life should be freely criticized whenever they do wrong; but all should be judged by one standard in making comparisons. . . .We do not, as a people, suffer from the lack of criticism, but we do suffer from the lack of impartial and intelligent criticism. —“The Merit System versus the Patronage System,” Century, February 1890 No man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. —An Autobiography, 1913 [T]he more I see of public and social life, the more I believe in a genuine democracy of spirit, and the more I feel that the least desirable form of an aristocracy is a plutocracy. —Letter to Kermit Roosevelt, June 13, 1906 A man who stays long in our American political life, if he has in his soul the generous desire to do effective service for great causes, inevitably grows to regard himself merely as one of many instruments, all of which it may be necessary to use, one at one time, one at another, in achieving the triumph of those causes; and whenever the usefulness of any one has been exhausted, it is to be thrown aside. If such a man is wise, he will gladly do the thing that is next, when the time and the need come together, without asking what the future holds for him. Let the half-god play his part well and manfully, and then be content to draw aside when the god appears. Nor should he feel vain regrets that to another it is given to render greater services and reap a greater reward. Let it be enough for him that he too has served, and that by 156

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt doing well he has prepared the way for the other man who can do better. —An Autobiography, 1913

Reactionaries (see also Extremism) The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead. —Address at Lincoln Day banquet, New York City, February 12, 1913

Reading (see also Books) I find reading a great comfort. People often say to me that they do not see how I find time for it, to which I answer them (much more truthfully than they believe) that to me it is a dissipation, which I have sometimes to try to avoid, instead of an irksome duty. Of course I have been so busy for the last ten years, so absorbed in political work, that I have simply given up reading any book that I do not find interesting. But there are a great many books which ordinarily pass for “dry” which to me do possess much interest—notably history and anthropology; and these give me ease and relaxation that I can get in no other way, not even on horseback! —Letter to George Otto Trevelyan, May 28, 1904 Normally I only care for a novel if the ending is good and I quite agree with you that if the hero has to die he ought to die worthily and 157

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt nobly, so that our sorrow at the tragedy shall be tempered with the joy and pride one always feels when a man does his duty well and bravely. There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction. —Letter to Kermit Roosevelt, November 19, 1905

Reform (see also Progressivism) A man who goes into politics should not expect to reform everything right off, with a jump. —Address to the Liberal Club, Buffalo, New York, January 26, 1893 The important thing is generally the “next step.” We ought not to take it unless we are sure that it is advisable; but we should not hesitate to take it when once we are sure; and we can safely join with others who also wish to take it, without bothering our heads overmuch as to any somewhat fantastic theories they may have concerning, say, the two hundredth step, which is not yet in sight. —“Where We Can Work with Socialists,” Outlook, March 27, 1909 [D]on’t be content with mere effervescent denunciation of one thing or another. Evil can’t be done away with through one spasm of virtue. —Address to the City Club of New York, May 9, 1899 All reforms of first-class importance must look toward raising both men and women to a higher level. —“Women’s Rights,” Outlook, February 3, 1912

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt [T]he insistence upon having only the perfect cure often results in securing no betterment whatever. —Letter to Ray Stannard Baker, November 20, 1905 In social and economic, as in political reforms, the violent revolutionary extremist is the worst friend of liberty, just as the arrogant and intense reactionary is the worst friend of order. It was Lincoln, not Wendell Phillips and the fanatical abolitionists, who was the effective champion of union and freedom. —Letter to Ray Stannard Baker, November 28, 1905 [E]conomic reform must have a twofold object; first to increase general prosperity, because unless there is such general prosperity no one will be well off; and, second, to secure a fair distribution of this prosperity, so that the man of the people shall share in it. —Introduction to Charles McCarthy, The Wisconsin Idea, 1912 It is a prime necessity, that if the present unrest is to result in permanent good the emotion shall be translated into action, and that the action shall be marked by honesty, sanity, and self-restraint. There is mighty little good in a mere spasm of reform. The reform that counts is that which comes through steady, continuous growth; violent emotionalism leads to exhaustion. —“The Man with the Muck-Rake,” address at the laying of the cornerstone of the U.S. House of Representatives office building, Washington, April 14, 1906 The really valuable—the invaluable—reform is that which in actual practice works. —“The Brotherly Court of Philadelphia,” Metropolitan, May 1917

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Reformers (see also Progressive Party) There are certain qualities the reformer must have if he is to be a real reformer and not merely a faddist. . . . He must possess high courage, disinterested desire to do good, and sane, wholesome common sense . . . and it is furthermore much to his benefit if he also possesses a sound sense of humor. —“Reform through Social Work,” McClure’s, March 1901 More and more I have grown to have a horror of the reformer who is half charlatan and half fanatic, and ruins his own cause by overstatement. —Letter to Owen Wister, July 20, 1901 Now, a word to my fellow reformers. If they permit themselves to adopt an attitude of hate and envy toward the millionaire they are just about as badly off as if they adopt an attitude of mean subservience to him. It is just as much a confession of inferiority to feel mean hatred and defiance of a man as it is to feel a mean desire to please him overmuch. In each case it means that the man having the emotion is not confident in himself, that he lacks self-confidence, self-reliance, that he does not stand on his own feet; and, therefore, in each case it is an admission that the man is not as good as the man whom he hates and envies, or before whom he truckles. —Address at Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California, March 24, 1911

Religion We are not going to make any new commandments at this stage of the world’s progress that will take the place of the old ones. The truths that were spoken on Mount Sinai are true now. 160

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt —Address at Kansas City, Missouri, May 1, 1903 The religious man who is most useful is not he whose sole care is to save his own soul, but the man whose religion bids him strive to advance decency and clean living and to make the world a better place for his fellows to live in. —Address at the Harvard Union, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 23, 1907 To be just with all men, to be merciful to those to whom mercy should be shown, to realize that there are some things that must always remain a mystery to us, and when the time comes for us to enter the great blackness, to go smiling and unafraid. That is my religion, my faith. To me it sums up all religion, it is all the creed I need. It seems simple and easy, but there is more in that verse than in the involved rituals and confessions of faith of many creeds we know. — Quoted in John J. Leary Jr., Talks with T.R. While there is in modern times a decrease in emotional religion, there is an immense increase in practical morality. — Review of Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay, in Forum, January 1897 The establishment of the doctrine of evolution in our time offers no more justification for upsetting religious beliefs than the discovery of the facts concerning the solar system a few centuries ago. Any faith sufficiently robust to stand the—surely very slight—strain of admitting that the world is not flat and does move round the sun need have no apprehensions on the score of evolution. —“The Search for Truth in a Reverent Spirit,” Outlook, December 2, 1911 161

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt [U]nder the tense activity of modern social and industrial conditions the church, if it is to give real leadership, must grapple zealously, fearlessly and cool-headedly with these problems. Unless it is the poor man’s church it is not a Christian church at all in any real sense. The rich man needs it, heaven knows, and is needed by it. But unless in the church he can work with all his toiling brothers for a common end, for their mutual benefit and for the benefit of those without its walls, the church has come short of its mission and its possibilities. —“Shall We Do Away with the Church?” Ladies’ Home Journal, October 1917

Religious Freedom (see also Constitution) If there is one thing for which we stand in this country, it is for complete religious freedom and for the right of every man to worship his Creator as his conscience dictates. It is an emphatic negation of this right to cross-examine a man on his religious views before being willing to support him for office. Is he a good man, and is he fit for the office? These are the only questions which there is a right to ask. . . . In my own cabinet there are at present Catholic, Protestant and Jew— the Protestants being of various denominations. I am incapable of discriminating between them, or of judging any one of them save as to the way in which he performs his public duty. The rule of conduct applicable to Catholic, Protestant and Jew as regards lesser offices is just as applicable as regards the presidency. —Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 16, 1908 We must all strive to keep as our most precious heritage the liberty each to worship his God as to him seems best, and, as part of this 162

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt liberty, freely either to exercise it or to surrender it, in a greater or less degree, each according to his own beliefs and convictions, without infringing on the beliefs and convictions of others. —“The Search for Truth in a Reverent Spirit,” Outlook, December 2, 1911 The demand for a statement of a candidate’s religious belief can have no meaning except that there may be discrimination for or against him because of that belief. Discrimination against the holder of one faith means retaliatory discrimination against men of other faiths. The inevitable result of entering upon such a practice would be an abandonment of our real freedom of conscience and a reversion to the dreadful conditions of religious dissension which in so many lands have proved fatal to true liberty, to true religion, and to all advance in civilization. . . . You are entitled to know whether a man seeking your suffrages is a man of clean and upright life, honorable in all of his dealings with his fellows, and fit by qualification and purpose to do well in the great office for which he is a candidate; but you are not entitled to know matters which lie purely between himself and his Maker. —Letter to J. C. Martin, November 6, 1908

The Rich (see also Wealth) The great bulk of my wealthy and educated friends regard me as a dangerous crank. —To Henry Rider Haggard, June 28, 1912 I am continually brought in contact with very wealthy people. They are socially the friends of my family, and if not friends, at least 163

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt acquaintances of mine, and they were friends of my father’s. I think they mean well on the whole, but the more I see of them the more profoundly convinced I am of their entire unfitness to govern the country, and of the lasting damage they do by much of what they are inclined to think are the legitimate big business operations of the day. . . . Moreover, usually entirely without meaning it, they are singularly callous to the needs, sufferings, and feelings of the great mass of the people who work with their hands. —Letter to William Henry Moody, September 21, 1907 The wealthier . . . classes tend distinctly towards the bourgeois type; and an individual in the bourgeois stage of development, while honest, industrious, and virtuous, is also not unapt to be a miracle of timid and short-sighted selfi shness. The commercial classes are only too likely to regard everything merely from the standpoint of “Does it pay?” and many a merchant does not take any part in politics because he is shortsighted enough to think that it will pay him better to attend purely to making money, and too selfi sh to be willing to undergo any trouble for the sake of abstract duty. —“Machine Politics in New York City,” Century, November 1886 The moneymaker pure and simple not merely has no attraction for me, but is so antipathetic that if I am to get on well with him it is best that we should see each other as little as possible. —Letter to George Horace Lorimer, May 12, 1906 [There are men] who measure everything by the shop-till, the people who are unable to appreciate any quality that is not a mercantile commodity, who do not understand that a poet may do far more for a

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt country than the owner of a nail factory, who do not realize that no amount of commercial prosperity can supply the lack of the heroic virtues, or can in itself solve the terrible social problems which all the civilized world is now facing. The mere materialist is above all things, shortsighted. —“True American Ideals,” Forum, February 1895 Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses. . . . Such a man is only the more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a college or endowing a church, which makes those good people who are also foolish forget his real iniquity. —“True American Ideals,” Forum, February 1895 I do not intend to play a demagogue. On the other hand, I do intend, so far as in me lies, to see that the rich man is held to the same accountability as the poor man, and when the rich man is rich enough to buy unscrupulous advice from very able lawyers, this is not always easy. —Letter to Charles F. Scott, August 15, 1899 I have not the smallest prejudice against multimillionaires. I like them. But I always feel this way when I meet one of them: You have made millions—good; that shows you must have something in you; I wish you would show it. —Address at Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California, March 24, 1911

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt I decline to recognize the mere multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country; and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes him of real benefit, of real use—and such is often the case—why, then he does become an asset of worth. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910 The acquisition of wealth is not in the least the only test of success. After a certain amount of wealth has been accumulated, the accumulation of more is of very little consequence indeed from the standpoint of success, as success should be understood both by the community and the individual. —“Character and Success,” Outlook, March 31, 1900 Apparently these men [the rich] are influenced by a class consciousness which I had not supposed existed in any such strength. They live softly. Circumstances for which they are not responsible have removed their lives from the fears and anxieties of the ordinary men who toil. When a movement is undertaken to make life a little easier, a little better, for the ordinary man, to give him a better chance, these men of soft life seem cast into panic lest something that is not rightly theirs may be taken from them. In unmanly fear they stand against all change, no matter how urgent such change may be. They not only come far short of their duty when they thus act, but they show a lamentable short-sightedness. —“The Case against the Reactionaries,” campaign speech at Chicago, June 17, 1912 There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for 166

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the “money touch,” but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers. —Letter to Edward Grey, November 15, 1913

Rights (see Constitution)

Roosevelt on Roosevelt I am, if I am anything, an American. I am an American from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. — Campaign speech at New York City, October 15, 1886 There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to “mean” horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. —An Autobiography, 1913 I am an optimist, but I hope I am a reasonably intelligent one. I recognize that all the time there are numerous evil forces at work, and that in places and at times they outweigh the forces that tend for good. Hitherto, on the whole, the good have come out ahead, and I think that they will in the future. —Letter to Owen Wister, February 27, 1895 I always believe in going hard at everything. —Letter to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., May 7, 1901 167

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt My experience is that it pays never to let up or grow slack or fall behind. —Letter to Kermit Roosevelt, December 4, 1904 I have come to the conclusion that I have mighty little originality of my own. What I do is to try to get ideas from men whom I regard as experts along certain lines, and then try to work out those ideas. —Letter to Andrew Dickson White, December 26, 1899 I’m no orator, and in writing I’m afraid I’m not gifted at all, except perhaps that I have a good instinct and a liking for simplicity and directness. If I have anything at all resembling genius it is the gift for leadership. — Quoted in Julian Street, “Roosevelt, Citizen of New York,” introduction to the 1924 edition of New York, 1891 I have only a second rate brain, but I think I have a capacity for action. — Quoted in Owen Wister, Roosevelt: the Story of a Friendship I am just an ordinary man without any special ability in any direction. In most things I am just about the average; in some of them a little under, rather than over. . . .The things that I have done, in one office, or another, are all, with the possible exception of the Panama Canal, just such things as any ordinary man could have done. There is nothing brilliant or outstanding in my record, except, perhaps, this one thing. Whatever I think it is right for me to do, I do. I do the things that I believe ought to be done. And when I make up my mind to do a thing, I act. — Quoted in Oscar King Davis, Released for Publication I am a great believer in practical politics; but when my duty is to enforce a law, that law is surely going to be enforced, without fear or 168

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt favor. I am perfectly willing to be turned out—or legislated out— but while in I mean business. —Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, June 29, 1889 Fundamentally it is the radical liberal with whom I sympathize. He is at least working toward the end for which I think we should all of us strive; and when he adds sanity and moderation to courage and enthusiasm for high ideals he develops into the kind of statesman . . . I can wholeheartedly support. —Letter to George Otto Trevelyan, October 1, 1911 I tried my best to lead the people, to advise them, to tell them what I thought was right; if necessary, I never hesitated to tell them what I thought they ought to hear, even though I thought it would be unpleasant for them to hear it; but I recognized that my task was to try to lead them and not to drive them, to take them into my confidence, to try to show them that I was right, and then loyally and in good faith to accept their decision. —“Confession of Faith,” address at the Progressive National Convention, Chicago, August 6, 1912 As for my name, it is pronounced as if it was spelled “Rosavelt.” That is in three syllables. The first syllable as if it was “Rose.” —Letter to Rev. William W. Moir, October 10, 1898

Roosevelt’s Contemporaries on Roosevelt Nobody likes him now but the people. —James Bryce, quoted in Lawrence F. Abbott, ed., The Letters of Archie Butt 169

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt Roosevelt was a many-sided man and every side was like an electric battery. Such versatility, such vitality, such thoroughness, such copiousness, have rarely been united in one man. He was not only a full man, he was also a ready man and an exact man. He could bring all his vast resources of power and knowledge to bear upon a given subject instantly. —John Burroughs, quoted in Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia I met in him a man of such extraordinary power that to fi nd a second at the same time on this globe would have been an impossibility; a man whom to associate with was a liberal education, and who could be in every way likened to radium, for warmth, force and light emanated from him and no spending of it could ever diminish his store. —Jules Jusserand, quoted in Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia Roosevelt was never polite to an opponent; perhaps a gentleman, by what passes as American standards, he was surely never a gentle man. — H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, Second Series He had a talent for innocency. All things with which he associated himself fell in his mind easily into the category of goodness. —Amos R. Pinchot, History of the Progressive Party, 1912–1916 Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake there would have been a fight. —Vice President Thomas R. Marshall Theodore Roosevelt was the first president who knew that the United States had come of age . . . that they had become a world power. He was 170

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt the first to realize what that means, its responsibilities and its dangers and its implication, and the first to prepare the country spiritually and physically for this inescapable destiny. —Walter Lippmann, Public Persons You had to hate the Colonel a whole lot to keep from loving him. —Irvin S. Cobb, quoted in Edward Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt

Rough Riders They were a splendid set of men . . . tall and sinewy, with resolute, weather-beaten faces, and eyes that looked a man straight in the face without fl inching. They included in their ranks men of every occupation; but the three types were those of the cowboy, the hunter, and the mining prospector—the man who wandered hither and thither, killing game for a living, and spending his life in the quest for metal wealth. In all the world there could be no better material for soldiers than that afforded by these grim hunters of the mountains, these wild rough riders of the plains. . . . They were hardened to life in the open, and to shifting for themselves under adverse circumstances. —The Rough Riders, 1899 In my regiment nine-tenths of the men were better horsemen than I was, and probably two-thirds of them better shots than I was, while on the average they were certainly hardier and more enduring. Yet after I had had them a very short while they all knew, and I knew too, that nobody else could command them as I could. —Letter to Theodore Roosevelt Jr., October 4, 1903 171

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Scholarship Scholarship that consists in mere learning, but finds no expression in production, may be of interest and value to the individual, just as ability to shoot well at clay pigeons may be of interest and value to him, but it ranks no higher, unless it finds expression in achievement. From the standpoint of the nation, and from the broader standpoint of mankind, scholarship is of worth chiefly when it is productive, when the scholar not merely receives or acquires but gives. —“Productive Scholarship,” Outlook, January 13, 1912

Science [T]he greatest utilitarian discoveries have often resulted from scientific investigations which had no distinct purpose. Our whole art of navigation arose from the studies of certain Greek mathematicians in Alexandria and Syracuse who had no idea that their studies in geometry and trigonometry would ever have a direct material value. —Address at the opening of the New York State Museum, Albany, December 29, 1916 I believe that as the field of science encroaches on the field of literature there should be a corresponding encroachment of literature upon science; and I hold that one of the great needs, which can only be met by very able men whose culture is broad enough to include literature as well as science, is the need of books for scientific laymen. We need a literature of science which shall be readable. —“Biological Analogies in History,” address at Oxford University, June 7, 1910

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Self-Discipline No man can do good work in the world for himself, for those whom he loves who are dependent upon him, or for the state at large, unless he has the great virtue of self-mastery, unless he can control his passions and appetites, and force head and hand to work according to the dictates of conscience. —“Nationalism and Democracy,” Outlook, March 25, 1911 The loose tongue and the unready hand make a poor combination. —Letter to Owen Wister, July 7, 1915 There is not one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us; he who has never failed has not been tempted; but the man who does in the end conquer, who does painfully retrace the steps of his slipping, why he shows that he has been tried in the fire and not found wanting. It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts, which is banal—as regards phrase, but an undying truth, as regards fact. —Letter to Edwin Arlington Robinson, March 27, 1916

Senate I do not much admire the Senate, because it is such a helpless body when efficient work for good is to be done. Two or three determined Senators seem able to hold up legislation, or at least good legislation, in an astonishing way. —Letter to Joseph Bucklin Bishop, March 23, 1905

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt The esprit de corps in the Senate is strong, and the traditions they inherit come from the day when, in the first place, men dueled and were more considerate of one another’s feelings, even in doing business; and when, in the second place, the theories of all doctrinaire statesmen were that the one thing that was needed in government was a system of checks, and that the whole danger to government came not from inefficiency but from tyranny. In consequence, the Senate has an immense capacity for resistance. —Letter to John St. Loe Strachey, February 12, 1906 Some of the things the Senate does really work to increase the power of the Executive. They are able so effectually to hold up action when they are consulted, and are so slow about it, that they force a President who has any strength to such individual action as I took in both Panama and Santo Domingo. In neither case would a President a hundred years ago have ventured to act without previous assent by the Senate. —Letter to John St. Loe Strachey, February 12, 1906

Special Interests [E]very special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation. . . . There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910 In this country at the moment our chief concern must be to deprive the special interests of the power to which they are not entitled and 174

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt which they use for the corruption of our institutions and to our economic and social undoing. There are persons who contend that “special interests” is a vague and indeed a demagogic term, and incapable of definition. . . . A special interest is one which has been given by law certain improper advantages as compared with the mass of our people, or which enjoys such advantages owing to the absence of needed laws. As regards certain great corporations, the facts are so patent—being often made so by confession or judicial proceeding—that no discussion of them is necessary. —“Nationalism and Democracy,” Outlook, March 25, 1911 The representatives and beneficiaries of the special interests desire, not unnaturally, to escape all governmental control. What they prefer is that popular unrest should find its vent in mere debate. —“Nationalism and Progress,” Outlook, January 14, 1911

Sports Athletic sports, if followed properly, and not elevated into a fetish, are admirable for developing character, besides bestowing on participants an invaluable fund of health and strength. —“Professionalism in Sports,” North American Review, August 1890 To be really beneficial the sport must be enjoyed by the participator. Much more health will be gained by the man who is not always thinking of his health than by the poor being who is forever wondering whether he has helped his stomach or his lungs, or developed this or that muscle. —“The Value of an Athletic Training,” Harper’s Weekly, December 23, 1893 175

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt It is a good thing for a boy to have captained his school or college eleven, but it is a very bad thing if, twenty years afterward, all that can be said of him is that he has continued to take an interest in football, baseball, or boxing, and has with him the memory that he was once captain. —“Character and Success,” Outlook, March 31, 1900 From the days when Trajan in his letters to Pliny spoke with such hearty contempt of the Greek over-devotion to athletics, every keen thinker has realized that vigorous sports are only good in their proper place. But in their proper place they are very good indeed. — Foreword to Edward of Norwich, The Master of Game: The Oldest English Book on Hunting, 1904 [Athletics] encourage a true democratic spirit; for in the athletic field the man must be judged not with reference to outside and accidental attributes, but to that combination of bodily vigor and moral quality which go to make up prowess. —Address at the Harvard Union, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 23, 1907 A man whose business is sedentary should get some kind of exercise if he wishes to keep himself in as good physical trim as his brethren who do manual labor. —An Autobiography, 1913

Square Deal (see also Justice) I have been able to give direction and guidance to the forces which were demanding . . . that the Government should effectively shape the 176

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt policy that I have clumsily called a “square deal.” The term was used by me while groping about to try to find some more dignified expression which would yet rivet men’s minds on the object I thought all important. —Letter to William Allen White, December 2, 1904 [W]hen I say I believe in a square deal . . . all I mean is that there shall be no crookedness in the dealing. In other words, it is not in the power of any human being to devise legislation or administration by which each man shall achieve success and have happiness. . . . All any of us can pretend to do is to come as near as our imperfect abilities will allow to securing through governmental agencies an equal opportunity for each man to show the stuff that is in him; and that must be done with no more intention of discrimination against the rich man than the poor man, or against the poor man than the rich man. —Address at Dallas, Texas, April 5, 1905 When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. —“The New Nationalism,” address at Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910 In this country at the moment our chief concern must be to deprive the special interests of the power to which they are not entitled and which they use for the corruption of our institutions and to our economic and social undoing. . . . A special interest is one which has been given by law certain improper advantages as compared with the mass of our people, or which enjoys such advantages owing to the absence of needed laws. As regards certain great corporations, the facts are so 177

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt patent—being often made so by confession or judicial proceeding— that no discussion of them is necessary. —“Nationalism and Democracy,” Outlook, March 25, 1911

Strenuous Life (see also Action) I would strongly recommend some of our gilded youth to go West and try a short course of riding bucking ponies, and assist at the branding of a lot of Texas steers. — Quoted in Hermann Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Bad Lands I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires more easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. —“The Strenuous Life,” address to the Hamilton Club, Chicago, April 10, 1899 [O]ur country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they 178

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. —“The Strenuous Life,” address to the Hamilton Club, Chicago, April 10, 1899 One of the prime dangers of civilization has always been its tendency to cause the loss of virile fighting virtues, of the fighting edge. When men get too comfortable and lead too luxurious lives, there is always danger lest the softness eat like an acid into their manliness of fibre. —“The World Movement,” address at the University of Berlin, Germany, May 12, 1910 The curse of every ancient civilization was that its men in the end became unable to fight. Materialism, luxury, safety, even sometimes an almost modern sentimentality, weakened the fibre of each civilized race in turn; each became in the end a nation of pacifists, and then each was trodden under foot by some ruder people that had kept that virile fighting power the lack of which makes all other virtues useless and sometimes even harmful. —“The Dawn and Sunrise of History,” Outlook, February 14, 1917

Success [S]uccess is abhorrent if attained by the sacrifice of the fundamental principles of morality. The successful man, whether in business or in politics, who has risen by conscienceless swindling of his neighbors, by deceit and chicanery, by unscrupulous boldness and unscrupulous cunning, stands toward society as a dangerous wild beast. —“Civic Helpfulness,” Century, October 1900 179

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt I think that any man who has had what is regarded in the world as a great success must realize that the element of chance has played a great part in it. —“The Conditions of Success,” address at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, May 26, 1910 Success—the real success—does not depend upon the position you hold, but upon how you carry yourself in that position. —“The Conditions of Success,” address at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, May 26, 1910 There are two kinds of success. One is the very rare kind that comes to the man who has the power to do what no one else has the power to do. That is genius. . . . Such a man does what no one else can do. Only a very limited amount of the success of life comes to persons possessing genius. The average man who is successful—the average statesman, the average public servant, the average soldier, who wins what we call great success—is not a genius. He is a man who has merely the ordinary qualities that he shares with his fellows, but who has developed those ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree. —“The Conditions of Success,” address at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, May 26, 1910

Tolerance In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910 180

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt There is one test which we have a right to apply to the professors of all creeds—the test of conduct. —Address at Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California, March 26, 1911

Torture (see Lynching)

The Trusts (see Monopoly)

Veterans A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled, and less than that no man shall have. —Address at Springfield, Illinois, June 4, 1903 A peculiarly important branch of [our educational system] at the present time ought to be the training of the disabled and the crippled returning soldiers, so that they may become, not objects of charity, but self-supporting citizens. —“The Men Who Pay with Their Bodies for Their Souls’ Desire,” Metropolitan, November 1918

Vice The corrupt men have been perfectly content to let their opponents monopolize all the virtue while they themselves have been permitted to monopolize all the efficiency. —“The Higher Life of American Cities,” Outlook, December 21, 1895 181

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt If courage and strength and intellect are unaccompanied by the moral purpose, the moral sense, they become merely forms of expression for unscrupulous force and unscrupulous cunning. If the strong man has not in him the lift toward lofty things his strength makes him only a curse to himself and to his neighbor. —Address at Colorado Springs, August 2, 1901 Vice in its cruder and more archaic forms shocks everybody; but there is very urgent need that public opinion should be just as severe in condemnation of the vice which hides itself behind class or professional loyalty, or which denies that it is vice if it can escape conviction in the courts. The public and the representatives of the public, the high officials, whether on the bench or in executive or legislative positions, need to remember that often the most dangerous criminals, so far as the life of the nation is concerned, are not those who commit the crimes known to and condemned by the popular conscience for centuries, but those who commit crimes only rendered possible by the complex conditions of our modern industrial life. —Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1907 If you have small, shallow souls, and shallow hearts, I will not say you will be unhappy; you can obtain the bridge-club standards of happiness, and you can go through life without cares and without sorrows, and without conscious effort, in so far as your brains will enable you to do so; but you have richly deserved the contempt of everybody whose respect is worth having. —Address at Occidental College, Los Angeles, March 22, 1911 A flatterer is not a good companion for any man; and the public man who rises only by flattering his constituents is just as unsafe a companion for them. —“Nationalism and Democracy,” Outlook, March 25, 1911 182

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt Hypocrisy is as revolting in a nation as in a man; and in the long run, I do not believe it pays either man or nation. —“Russian Treaty, Arbitration, and Hypocrisy,” Outlook, December 30, 1911 A man who preaches decency and straight dealing occupies a peculiarly contemptible position if he does not try himself to practice what he preaches. —Address at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 4, 1910

Vice Presidency (see also Presidency) [The vice president] should always be a man who would be consulted by the president on every great party issue. It would be very well if he were given a seat in the cabinet. —“The Three Vice-Presidential Candidates and What They Represent,” American Review of Reviews, September 1896 I have been vice president, and I know how hollow the honor is. — Quoted in Lawrence F. Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt

Victory I hope I have taken to heart Lincoln’s life, at least sufficiently to make me feel that triumph gives less cause for elation than for a solemn realization of the responsibility it entails. —Letter to James Ford Rhodes, November 29, 1904 183

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt It is more difficult to preserve the fruits of a victory than to win the victory. —“Reform through Social Work,” McClure’s, March 1901

Virtue [T]he virtue that is worth having is the virtue that can sustain the rough shock of actual living; the virtue that can achieve practical results, that finds expression in actual life. —Address to the New York State Bar Association, Albany, January 8, 1899 The other day in a little Lutheran church at Sioux Falls I listened to a most interesting and most stimulating sermon, which struck me particularly because of the translation of a word which, I am ashamed to say, I had myself always before mistranslated. It was on the old text of faith, hope, and charity. The sermon was delivered in German, and the word the preacher used for charity was not charity, but love; preaching that the greatest of all the forces with which we deal for betterment is love. Looking it up I found, of course, that the Greek word which we have translated into the word charity, should be more properly translated love. . . . This Lutheran preacher developed in a very striking but very happy fashion the absolute need of love in the broadest sense of the word, in order to make mankind even approximately perfect. —Address at Topeka, Kansas, May 1, 1903 Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage. —“Nationalism and International Relations,” Outlook, April 1, 1911

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt We need discipline in our own individual characters. We need it if we are going to be of any use to ourselves; and we need it unless we expect to be quite intolerable to others. —“The New and Better Method of Teaching Parents and the Young,” Ladies’ Home Journal, January 1917

Voting (see also Citizens) A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. —An Autobiography, 1913 I feel that it is exactly as much a “right” of women as of men to vote. But the important point with both men and women is to treat the exercise of the suffrage as a duty, which, in the long run, must be well performed to be of the slightest value. —An Autobiography, 1913

War (see also Defense, International Relations, Peace) Rebellion, revolution—the appeal to arms to redress grievances; these are measures that can only be justified in extreme cases. It is far better to suffer any moderate evil, or even a very serious evil, so long as there is a chance of its peaceable redress. — Oliver Cromwell, 1900

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because it is war. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910 At this moment there is a very grave crisis in Europe, and before the war clouds now gathering, all the peace and arbitration treaties, and all the peace and arbitration societies, and all the male and female shrieking sisterhood of Carnegies and the like, are utterly powerless. If war is averted, it will be only because Germany thinks that France has a first-class army and will fight hard, and that England is ready and able to render her some prompt assistance. —Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 12, 1911 I abhor unjust war, and I deplore that the need even for just war should ever occur. I believe we should set our faces like flint against any policy of aggression by this country on the rights of any other country. —“Preparedness without Militarism,” New York Times, November 15, 1914 The only proper rule is never to fight at all if you can honorably avoid it, but never under any circumstances to fight in a half-hearted way. —Address at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 27, 1917 The intensity of conviction in the righteousness of their several causes shown by the several peoples is a prime factor for consideration, if we are to take efficient means to try to prevent a repetition of this incredible world tragedy. . . . To each of these peoples the war seems a crusade against threatening wrong, and each man fervently believes in the justice of his cause. Moreover, each

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt combatant fights with that terrible determination to destroy the opponent. . . . It is not the fear which any one of these powers has inspired that offers the difficult problem. It is the fear which each of them genuinely feels. —“Theodore Roosevelt on Ultimate Causes of the War,” New York Times, October 11, 1914 The work of all The Hague conventions, and all the arbitration treaties, neutrality treaties, and peace treaties of the last twenty years has been swept before the gusts of war like withered leaves before a November storm. In this great crisis the stern and actual facts have shown that the fate of each nation depends not in the least upon any elevated international aspirations to which it has given expression in speech or treaty, but on practical preparation, on intensity of patriotism, on grim endurance, and on the possession of the fighting edge. —“Our Course in the Light of War’s Lessons,” New York Times, November 29, 1914 Our business is to create the beginnings of international order out of the world of nations as these nations actually exist. We do not have to deal with a world of pacifists, and, therefore, we must proceed on the assumption that treaties will never acquire sanctity until nations are ready to seal them with their blood. We are not striving for Peace in Heaven. That is not our affair. What we were bidden to strive for is “Peace on Earth and Good-Will toward Men.” To fulfill this injunction it is necessary to treat the earth as it is and men as they are, as an indispensable prerequisite to making the earth a better place in which to live and men better fit to live in it. —“Our Course in the Light of War’s Lessons,” New York Times, November 29, 1914

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt Peace congresses, peace parades, the appointment and celebration of days of prayer for peace, and the like, which result merely in giving the participants the feeling that they have accomplished something and are therefore to be excused from hard, practical work for righteousness, are empty shams. —“Our Course in the Light of War’s Lessons,” New York Times, November 29, 1914 The storm that is raging in Europe at this moment is terrible and evil; but it is also grand and noble. Untried men who live at ease will do well to remember that there is a certain sublimity even in Milton’s defeated archangel, but none whatever in the spirits who kept neutral, who remained at peace, and dared side neither with hell nor with heaven. —America and the World War, 1915 There is no meaner moral attitude than that of a timid and selfish neutrality between right and wrong. —“Peace Insurance by Preparedness against War,” Metropolitan, August 1915 Our army in France will fight for France and Belgium; but most of all it will be fighting for America. Until we make the world safe for America (and incidentally until we make democracy safe in America), it is empty rhetoric to talk of making the world safe for democracy; and no one of these objects can be obtained merely by high-sounding words, or by anything else save by the exercise of hard, grim, common sense in advance preparation, and then by unflinching courage in the use of the hardened strength which has thus been prepared. —The Foes of Our Own Household, 1917 188

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt The finest, the bravest, the best of our young men have sprung eagerly forward to face death for the sake of a high ideal, and thereby they have brought home to us the great truth that life consists of more than easygoing pleasure, and more than hard, conscienceless, brutal striving after purely material success; that while we must rightly care for the body and the things of the body, yet that such care leads nowhere unless we also have thought that for our own souls and for the souls of our brothers. —Address at the Republican State Convention, Saratoga, New York, July 18, 1918, the day after Theodore and Edith Roosevelt learned that their son Quentin, an aviator, had been killed in France

Booker T. Washington When I asked Booker T. Washington to dinner I did not devote very much thought to the matter one way or the other. I respect him greatly and believe in the work he has done. I have consulted so much with him it seemed to me that it was natural to ask him to dinner to talk over this work, and the very fact that I felt a moment’s qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself and made me hasten to send the invitation. I did not think of its bearing one way or the other, either on my own future or on anything else. As things have turned out, I am very glad I asked him, for the clamor aroused by the act makes me feel as if the act was necessary. —Letter to Albion W. Tourgée, November 8, 1901 The Booker T. Washington incident was to me so much a matter of course that I regarded its sole importance as consisting in the view it gave one of the continued existence of that combination of 189

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt Bourbon intellect and intolerant truculence of spirit, through much of the South, which brought on the Civil War. If these creatures had any sense they would understand that they can’t bluff me. They can’t even make me abandon my policy of appointing decent men to office in their own localities. —Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 28, 1901 He had that quality, that essential quality in every teacher . . . which will teach the boy and the girl that the real happiness of life is to be found, not in shirking difficulties, but in overcoming them; not in striving to lead a life which shall so far as possible avoid effort and labor and hardship, but a life which shall face difficulty and win over it, be it ever so hard, by labor very intelligently entered into and resolutely persevered in. —Address at Washington’s memorial service, Tuskegee, Alabama, December 12, 1915 Eminent though his services were to the people of his own color, the white men of our Republic were almost as much indebted to him, both directly and indirectly. They were indebted to him directly, because of the work he did on behalf of industrial education for the Negro, thus giving impetus to the work for the industrial education of the white man, which is, at least, as necessary. — Preface to E. J. Scott and L. B. Stowe, Booker T. Washington, 1916

Wealth (see also The Rich) It is an exceedingly nice thing to have money enough to be able to take a hunting trip in Africa after big game (if you are not able to make 190

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt it pay for itself in some other way). It is an exceedingly nice thing, if you are young, to have one or two good jumping horses and to be able to occasionally hunt. . . . It is an exceedingly nice thing to have a good house and to be able to purchase good books and good pictures, and especially to have that house isolated from others. But I wholly fail to see where any real enjoyment comes from a dozen automobiles, a couple of hundred horses, and a good many different houses luxuriously upholstered. From the standpoint of real pleasure I should selfishly prefer my old-time ranch on the Little Missouri to anything in Newport. —Letter to Cecil Arthur Spring Rice, April 11, 1908 Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy. —An Autobiography, 1913 It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself. —Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910 The point to be aimed at is the protection of the individual against wrong, not the attempt to limit and hamper the acquisition and output of wealth. —Annual Message as New York State Governor, Albany, January 3, 1900 There can be no delusion more fatal to the nation than the delusion that the standard of profits, of business prosperity, is sufficient in judging any business or political question. —Annual Message to Congress, December 5, 1905 191

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The West If you expect to make a fortune in a year or two, don’t come west. If you will give up under temporary discouragements, don’t come out west. If, on the other hand, you are willing to work hard, especially the first year; if you realize that for a couple of years you cannot expect to make much more than you are now making; if you also know at the end of that time you will be in the receipt of about a thousand dollars for the third year, with an unlimited field ahead of you and a future as bright as you yourself choose to make it, then come. —Letter to Bill Sewall, July 6, 1884 The first lesson the backwoodsmen learnt was the necessity of selfhelp; the next, that such a community could only thrive if all joined in helping one another. —The Winning of the West, 1889 An energetic, thrifty, hardworking young fellow who is a good carpenter or blacksmith will always find an opening, and if he labors as hard as he did in the East, will get along much faster. Of course I am not now speaking of such exceptional success as falls to the lot of a few of the men who go West, but of the chances opening themselves to the average man who possesses both push and honesty. —“Who Should Go West?” Harper’s Weekly, January 2, 1886 The Americans began their work of western conquest as a separate and individual people, at the moment when they sprang into national life. It has been their great work ever since. All other questions, save those of the preservation of the Union itself and of the emancipation of the blacks, have been of subordinate importance when compared with the great question of how rapidly and how completely they were 192

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt to subjugate that part of their continent lying between the eastern mountains and the Pacific. —The Winning of the West, 1889 The general feeling in the West . . . crystallized into what became known as the “Manifest Destiny” idea, which reduced to its simplest terms, was: that it was our manifest destiny to swallow up the land of all adjoining nations who were too weak to withstand us; a theory that forthwith obtained immense popularity among all statesmen of easy international morality. . . . The hearty Western support given to the movement was due to entirely different causes, the chief among them being the fact that the Westerners honestly believed themselves to be indeed created the heirs of the earth. —Thomas Hart Benton, 1887

The White House (see also Presidency) I do not think that any two people ever got more enjoyment out of the White House than Mother and I. We love the House itself without and within, for its associations, for its stateliness and its simplicity. We love the garden. And we like Washington. We almost always take our breakfast on the south portico now, Mother looking very pretty and dainty in her summer dresses. Then we stroll about the garden for fifteen or twenty minutes looking at the flowers and the fountains and admiring the trees. Then I work until between four and five, usually have some official people to lunch—now a couple of senators, now a couple of ambassadors, now a literary man, now a capitalist or labor leader, or a scientist, or a big-game hunter. If Mother wants to ride, we then spend a couple of hours on horseback. —Letter to Theodore Roosevelt Jr., May 28, 1904 193

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Wildlife Photography More and more, as it becomes necessary to preserve the game, let us hope that the camera will largely supplant the rifle. It is an excellent thing to have a nation proficient in marksmanship, and it is highly undesirable that the rifle should be wholly laid by. But the shot is, after all, only a small part of the free life of the wilderness. The chief attractions lie in the physical hardihood for which the life calls, the sense of limitless freedom which it brings, and the remoteness and wild charm and beauty of primitive nature. All of this we get exactly as much in hunting with the camera as in hunting with the rifle; and of the two, the former is the kind of sport which calls for the higher degree of skill, patience, resolution, and knowledge of the life history of the animal sought. —Introduction to Allen Grant Wallihan and Mary Augusta Higgins Wallihan, Camera Shots at Big Game, May 31, 1901 The older I grow the less I care to shoot anything except “varmints.” I do not think it at all advisable that the gun should be given up, nor does it seem to me that shooting wild game under proper restrictions can be legitimately opposed by any who are willing that domestic animals shall be kept for food; but there is altogether too much shooting, and if we can only get the camera in place of the gun and have the sportsman sunk somewhat in the naturalist and lover of wild things, the next generation will see an immense change for the better in the life of our woods and waters. —Introduction to Herbert K. Job, Wild Wings, 1905 In addition to being a true sportsman and not a game-butcher, in addition to being a humane man as well as keen-eyed, strong-limbed, and stouthearted, the big-game hunter should be a field naturalist. If 194

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt possible, he should be an adept with the camera; and hunting with the camera will tax his skill far more than hunting with the rifle, while the results in the long run give much greater satisfaction. Wherever possible he should keep a notebook, and should carefully study and record the habits of the wild creatures, especially when in some remote regions to which trained scientific observers but rarely have access. — Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, 1905

Wilderness (see also Conservation, National Parks) Birds should be saved because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents. A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger-pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims.* And to lose the chance to see frigate-birds soaring in circles above the storm, or a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson afterglow of the sunset or a myriad terns flashing in the bright light of midday as they hover in a shifting maze above the beach—why, the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists of old time. —A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open, 1916 *One of the most historically significant cathedrals in France, it was destroyed by shellfire in the first weeks of World War I. Birds that are useless for the table and not harmful to the farm should always be preserved; and the more beautiful they are, the more carefully they should be preserved. They look a great deal better in 195

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt the swamps and on the beaches and among the trees than they do on hats. —“Hunter-Naturalist in Europe and Africa,” Outlook, September 16, 1911 If we fail to take advantage of our possibilities, if we fail to pass, in the interest of all, wise game laws, and to see that these game laws are properly enforced, we shall then have to thank ourselves if in the future the game is only found in the game preserves of the wealthy; and under such circumstances only these same wealthy people will have the chance to hunt it. — Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, 1905 Yesterday I saw for the first time a grove of your great trees, a grove which it has taken the ages several thousands of years to build up; and I feel most emphatically that we should not turn into shingles a tree which was old when the first Egyptian conqueror penetrated to the valley of the Euphrates. . . . That, you may say, is not looking at the matter from the practical standpoint. There is nothing more practical in the end than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions in mankind. —Address at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, May 12, 1903 All civilized governments are now realizing that it is their duty here and there to preserve, unharmed, tracts of wild nature, with thereon the wild things the destruction of which means the destruction of half the charm of wild nature. —African Game Trails, 1910

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt It is deeply discreditable to the people of any country calling itself civilized that as regards many of the grandest or most beautiful or most interesting forms of wild life once to be found in the land we should now be limited to describing, usually in the driest of dry books, the physical characteristics which when living they possessed, and the melancholy date at which they ceased to live. —“Conservation of Wild Life,” Outlook, January 20, 1915 Very wealthy men can have private game preserves of their own. But the average man of small or moderate means can enjoy the vigorous pastime of the chase, and indeed can enjoy wild nature, only if there are good general laws, properly enforced, for the preservation of the game and wild life, and if, furthermore, there are big parks or reserves provided for the use of all our people, like those of the Yellowstone, the Yosemite, and the Colorado. —A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open, 1916

Women Especially as regards the laws relating to marriage there should be the most absolute equality between the two sexes. I do not think the woman should assume the man’s name. —“The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women before the Law,” senior thesis, Harvard University, 1880 Now for the statement about women having no proper share in a political convention, and that men ought to be able to regulate their own politics and meet all needs without direct assistance from the women. That man knows little of our political, social and industrial needs as a nation who does not know that in political conventions

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th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt the politics that ought to be “regulated” are the politics that affect women precisely as much as they affect men; and he must be unfortunate in his list of acquaintances if he does not know women whose advice and counsel are pre-eminently worth having in regard to the matters affecting our welfare. —Campaign speech at St. Johnsbury, Vermont, August 30, 1912 Anything that the women of this country want, I want to give them. Now, I base my hope and base my firm belief in the future of the American Nation because I think that the average American is a pretty good fellow and that his wife is a still better fellow. —Progressive Principles, 1913

Women’s Rights (see also Constitution, Equality) Viewed purely in the abstract, I think there can be no question that women should have equal rights with men. —“The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women before the Law,” senior thesis, Harvard University, 1880 Working women have the same need to combine for protection that working men have; the ballot is as necessary for one class as for the other. —“Confession of Faith,” address at the Progressive National Convention, Chicago, August 6, 1912 Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly. —An Autobiography, 1913 198

th e wo rds o f t heo do re ro o sevelt It is entirely right that any woman should be allowed to make any career for herself of which she is capable. . . . She has the same right to be a lawyer, a doctor, a farmer, or a storekeeper that the man has to be a poet, an explorer, a politician, or a painter. . . . Whether a writer or a painter or a singer is a man or a woman makes not the slightest difference, provided that the work he or she does is good. —“The Parasite Woman,” Metropolitan, May 1916 I always favored woman’s suffrage, but only tepidly, until my association with women like Jane Addams and Frances Kellor, who desired it as one means of enabling them to render better and more efficient service, changed me into a zealous instead of a lukewarm adherent of the cause. —An Autobiography, 1913 There has always been to me an element of great absurdity in the arguments advanced against woman suffrage when we consider the fact that from time immemorial in monarchies women have been deemed fit to hold the very highest place of government power, that is, the position of sovereign. For example, this continent was discovered by Columbus under the patronage of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain; and he owed more to the Queen than to the King. The oldest state in the Union, Virginia, derives its name from the fact that the first effort at colonization from England on our shores was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and during the last four centuries Queen Elizabeth was certainly the greatest sovereign who sat on the English throne. When Frederick the Great was King of Prussia the only two European sovereigns who in any shape or way compared with him were two women—Catherine of Russia and Maria Theresa of Austria. —Letter to Ethel Eyre Valentine Dreier, October 15, 1915 199

th e wo rds o f t heo do re roos evelt [I]s there any good or valid reason why women should not have many places we are apt to consider exclusive male property? To be sure, Jeannette Rankin* has shown a lack of some things to be desired in a member of Congress, but have all the male members been so good? I think not. Now that women are getting the ballot, we must be prepared to see them in many offices hitherto barred to them. Not a few of the most successful men I have known in public life owe their success very largely to the political sense of their wives. —Quoted in John J. Leary Jr., Talks with T.R. *Republican of Montana, first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Women have the vote in this state. They should be given it at once in the nation at large. And in the councils of this state, and in the councils of our party, women should be admitted to their share of the direction on an exact equality with the men, and whenever it is wisely possible their judgment and directive power should be utilized in association with men rather than separately. —Address at the Republican State Convention, Saratoga, New York, July 18, 1918

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a note on editorial method

The quotations presented here originally appeared in Roosevelt’s letters and speeches, his books, his articles for magazines and newspapers, and state papers written during his years as governor of New York and president of the United States. Many of the originals have been collected, published, and republished numerous times. I drew mainly from three sources: the twenty-volume Works of Theodore Roosevelt edited by Hermann Hagedorn (1926); the eight-volume Letters of Theodore Roosevelt edited by Elting Morison and John Morton Blum (1951–1954); and the 674-page compendium of quotations edited by Albert Bushnell Hart and Herbert Ronald Ferleger (1941), the Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia. Less frequently cited but still essential are the letters collected by Joseph Bucklin Bishop in his two-volume Theodore Roosevelt and His Time (1920) and the letters that Owen Wister incorporated in Roosevelt, the Story of a Friendship (1930). Complete bibliographical citations for the major sources are listed in the bibliography. Digitized (and usefully updated and augmented) by the Theodore Roosevelt Association, the Cyclopedia is now available online at www. theodoreroosevelt.org. Many of Roosevelt’s books have also been digitized. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Theodore Roosevelt’s words are now available, free and on demand, to anyone with an internet connection. Hundreds of thousands more are on the way: the

a no t e on e di tor i a l m e t hod Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University in North Dakota is working with the Library of Congress, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and other institutions with collections of Roosevelt materials to make thousands of unpublished Roosevelt documents available online. Each quotation in these pages is attributed to the original source because information about when and where Roosevelt made the statement is more informative than a citation of a later source would be. When the quotation comes from an article in a newspaper or a magazine, the article’s title has been included with the thought of enlarging the context. Roosevelt’s articles were often collected and published in book form a year or two after he wrote them. The editing done for the books sometimes led to minor changes in wording; in those instances, I have chosen to use the wording that appeared in the book. The changes were typically made to clarify certain points or to sand off a rough edge in the prose. Similar quotations on the same subject have been included when they contain subtle differences of meaning. The quotations have not been arranged in the exactly the same fashion under every topic. In general, I have begun each topic with the quotation I found most apt or most striking. After that, the quotations are usually arranged in chronological order, which has the advantage of showing the evolution of his thought. Where I have departed from chronology, it was to provide a flow of thought that seemed more revealing or logical than simple chronology would. As indicated by the ellipses, I have shortened some quotations to eliminate repetitions—Roosevelt did run on—and unimportant passages that would require lengthy explanations to be comprehensible to the modern reader.

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selected bibliog raphy

Books by Theodore Roosevelt Roosevelt, Theodore. The Naval War of 1812. New York: George Putnam’s Sons, 1882. ——. Hunting Trips of a Ranchman. New York: George Putnam’s Sons, 1885. ——. Thomas Hart Benton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888. ——. Gouverneur Morris. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888. ——. The Winning of the West. 4 vols. New York: George Putnam’s Sons, 1889. ——. Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail. New York: George Putnam’s Sons, 1899. ——. The Rough Riders. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899. ——. American Ideals. New York: George Putnam’s Sons, 1900. ——. Oliver Cromwell. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900. ——. The Strenuous Life. New York: Century, 1901. ——. The Wilderness Hunter. New York: George Putnam’s Sons, 1902. ——. New York. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906. ——. Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910. ——. African Game Trails. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910. ——. The New Nationalism. New York: Outlook Company, 1910. ——. Realizable Ideals. San Francisco: Whitaker and Ray-Wiggin, 1912. ——. An Autobiography. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913. ——. Through the Brazilian Wilderness. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914. ——. America and the World War. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915. ——. A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916. ——. Fear God and Take Your Own Part. New York: George H. Doran, 1916. ——. The Foes of Our Own Household. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1917. ——. The Great Adventure. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1918.

selec t ed bi bli o g raphy Principal Sources of Quotations Abbott, Lawrence F. Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1919. Abbott, Lawrence F., ed. The Letters of Archie Butt. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1924. Bishop, Joseph Bucklin. Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, Shown in His Letters. 2 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920. Davidson, Donald J., ed. The Wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Citadel, 2003. Hagedorn, Hermann. Roosevelt in the Bad Lands. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921. Hagedorn, Hermann, ed. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (National Edition). 20 vols. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926. Includes Roosevelt’s major books, many of his essays and newspaper articles, his autobiography, and his letters to his children. Harbaugh, William Henry. Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961. Hart, Albert Bushnell, and Herbert Ronald Ferleger, eds. Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia. New York: Roosevelt Memorial Association, 1941. Also available at www.theodoreroosevelt.org Jeffers, Paul H. The Bully Pulpit: A Book of Theodore Roosevelt Quotations. Dallas: Taylor, 1998. Lippmann, Walter. Public Persons. Edited by Gilbert Harrison. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2009. Lodge, Henry Cabot. Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925. Lodge, Henry Cabot, and Theodore Roosevelt. Hero Tales from American History. New York: Century, 1895. Morison, Elting, and John Morton Blum, eds. Letters of Theodore Roosevelt. 8 vols. Cambridge: Harvard, 1951–1954. Roosevelt, Theodore. Theodore Roosevelt’s Diaries of Boyhood and Youth. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928. ——. Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 1870–1918. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924. ——. Letters to His Children. Edited by Joseph Bucklin Bishop. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919. ——. Letters to Kermit from Theodore Roosevelt. Edited by Will Irwin. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946. 204

selec t ed bi bli o g raphy Stout, Ralph, ed. Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-Time Editorials by Theodore Roosevelt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921.

Further Reading Beale, Howard K. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. Blum, John Morton. The Republican Roosevelt. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954. Brinkley, Douglas. The Wilderness Warrior. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010. Cooper, John Milton. The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Dalton, Kathleen. Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life. New York: Knopf, 2002. Einstein, Lewis. Roosevelt: His Mind in Action. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930. Gable, John Allen. Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1978. Hagedorn, Hermann. The Roosevelts of Sagamore Hill. New York: Macmillan, 1954. Harbaugh, William H. Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961. Jeffers, Paul H. The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield/Taylor Trade Publishing, 1998. Marks, Frederick W. Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1979. McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. Millard, Candice. The River of Doubt. New York: Doubleday, 2005. Morris, Edmund. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Ballantine, 1980. ——. Theodore Rex. New York: Random House, 2001. ——. Colonel Roosevelt. New York: Random House, 2010. Morris, Sylvia Jukes. Edith Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady. New York: Vintage, 1980. O’Toole, Patricia. When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Pringle, Henry F. Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Harcourt, 1956 [repr. 1931]. Ricard, Serge, ed. A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt. My Brother Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921. 205

selec t ed bi bli o g raphy Roosevelt, Eleanor Butler Alexander. Day before Yesterday. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959. Roosevelt, Kermit. The Long Trail. New York: Review of Reviews, Metropolitan Magazine, 1921. Wagenknecht, Edward. The Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Longmans, Green, 1958. Wister, Owen. Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship, 1880–1919. New York: Macmillan, 1930. Wood, Frederick S. Roosevelt as We Knew Him. Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1927. Zimmermann, Warren. The First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.

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i n de x

Addams, Jane, 199 Adirondacks, 1, 10 Africa, 26, 43, 190 Albany, New York, 7 Alexandria, 172 Amazon River, 33, 34f, 35, 43 American Historical Association, 43 American Museum of Natural History, 4 American Revolution, 132 Antiquities Act (1906), 16, 42 Atlantic (magazine), 2 Atlantic Ocean, 23 Austen, Jane, 52 Australia, 127 Austria, 199 Badlands, North Dakota, 7, 40 Balkan Peninsula, 126 Belgium, 188 Berlin, 101 Big Stick (the), 3, 55 Borroughs, John, 52 Brazil, 32–33, 43 Brownsville, Texas, 42 Bryan, William Jennings, 12, 25, 41 Bunyan, John, 53, 148 Bureau of Corporations, 14 Bush, Ishmael, 52

California, 51 Canada, 127 Canton, Ohio, 11 Carthrage, 50 Catherine II, Empress, 199 Catskills, 10 Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, 6 Chicago, Illinois, 28 Children’s Aid Society, 4 China, 24 Christianity, 87, 138, 162 Civil Service Commission, U.S., 8, 40 Civil War (U.S.), 4, 190 Cleveland, Grover, 6 Colombia, 19, 41 Colorado Canyon, Arizona, 128, 197 Columbia Law School, 6 Columbus, Christopher, 199 Congress, U.S., 12, 13, 14, 16, 23, 25, 116, 132, 137, 174, 200 Constitution, 1, 13, 74–76, 143, 174 Continental Army, 83 Cooper, James Fenimore, 52 Cuba, 8, 10, 40–41 Dante Alighieri, 53 Alighieri Darwin, Charles, 1, 54–55 Davis, Henry G., 42 Debs, Eugene, 32

i n de x Democratic Party, 27, 32, 35 Dickens, Charles, 53 Department of Commerce and Labor, 14, 41 East Asia, 22–23 Eastern, U.S., 7, 192 Elizabeth I, Queen, 199 Elkhorn River, North Dakota, 7 Elkins Act (1903), 14, 41 Employer Liability Bill, 116 Euphrates River, 196 Europe, 2, 18, 21, 22, 24, 26, 126, 186, 188 Fairbanks, Charles W., 42, 44 Federalist ( The), 140 Ferdinand, King, 199 Forest Service, U.S., 42 France, 34, 42, 44, 108, 127, 186, 188 Frederick II, King, 199 “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” 23 Georgia, 4 Germany, 33–34, 41, 42, 78, 108, 186 Gibbon, Edward, 48, 55 Gilded Age, 5 Gompers, Samuel, 6, 7 Governor of New York State, 8–10, 12f Grand Canyon, Arizona, 128 Great Britain, 18, 19, 23, 108, 186, 199 Great White Fleet, 23, 42, 130–131 Guam, 19 Hamilton, Alexander, 140 Harper’s Weekly (magazine), 2 Harvard University, 5, 39 Hawaii, 19 Hay, John, 8 Hay-Paunceforte Treaty (1901), 19

Hepburn Act (1906), 14, 42 Herodotus, 48 Hobart, Garret A., 11 Hughes, Charles Evans, 44 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 54–55 Influence of Sea Power upon History ( The), 18 International Exhibit of Modern Art, 49 Interstate Commerce Commission, 14 Isabella, Queen, 199 Italy, 26 James, Henry, 26 Japan, 22–23, 108, 131 Jay, John, 140 Judaism, 84, 138, 162 Kansas City Stat (newspaper), 2, 35 Kellor, Frances, 199 Kennedy, John F., 12 Kogoro, Takahira, 24 Korean, 23 Latin America, 19–22, 42 League of Nations, 25 Lincoln, Abraham, 119, 120, 132, 150, 151, 159, 183 Little Missouri River, 191 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 11 London, 8, 101 Lusitania, RMS, 33–34 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 48, 97 Madison, James, 140 Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 18 Maine, 4 Manchuria, 23 Manhattan, 4, 6 Manifest Destiny, 193 Maria Theresa, Empress, 199 Marines, U.S., 19

208

i ndex Marshall, Thomas R., 44 Massachusetts, 11 McKinley, William, 11–12, 18, 25, 41 Meat Inspection Act (1906), 42 Metropolitan (magazine), 2 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 4 Mexican Revolution, 33 Michigan, 127 Middle Ages, 68 Monroe, James, 21 Monroe Doctrine, 21–22, 41 Morocco, 42 Mount Sinai, 160 National Progressive Party, 30–32, 43, 44, 150–151 Navy, U.S., 18–19, 22, 23, 40, 42, 130–131 Naval Affairs Committee, 23 Naval War of 1912 ( The), 1, 39 New Amsterdam, 3 New England, 54 New Jersey, 32 New Nationalism, 28, 43 New Netherland, 3 Newport, Rhode Island, 191 New York City, 3–4, 39, 40 New York City Board of Police Commissioners, 8, 40 New York Public Library New York State Assembly, 6, 7, 39 New York State Senate, 6 Nobel Peace Prize, 23, 42–43 North American Review (magazine), 2 Northern Securities Corporation, 13, 41 Norway, 26 Ohio, 28 Open Door Policy, 24 Osawatomie, Kansas, 28, 43 Outlook (magazine), 2 Oyster Bay, New York, 8, 25, 40

Pacific Ocean, 18, 23 Panama, Republic of, 20, 41, 174 Panama Canal, 19–21, 42, 116, 131–132, 168 Paris, 101 Parker, Alton B., 42 Parkman, Francis, 96–97 Permanent Court of Arbitration (the Hague), 22, 107, 187 Philippines, 19 Phillips, Wendell, 159 Phoenicia, 50 Pinchot, Gifford, 10 Pliny, 176 Poe, Edgar Allen, 54, 56 Post Office, U.S., 146 Presidency, U.S., 12–25, 41, 143–147, 174 Presidential Election of 1900, 11–12 Presidential Election of 1904, 25, 41 Presidential Election of 1908, 25 Presidential Election of 1912, 28–32 Protestantism, 84, 162, Prussia, 199 Pueblo Indians, 51 Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), 42 Rankin, Jeannette, 200 Republican Party, 6, 11, 25, 27–30, 35, 41, 43, 151 Rheims, France, 195 Rio de Janeiro, 33 Roman Catholicism, 84, 162 Rondon, Candido, 33, 43 Roosevelt, Anne Hathaway (née Lee), 6, 7, 39 Roosevelt, Edith Kermit (née Carow), 7, 32, 40 Roosevelt Corollary, 22, 42 Roosevelt Family, 3–8, 26, 35, 39–44 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 6 Root, Elihu, 24

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i n de x Rough Riders, 8, 9f, 41, 171 Russia, 22–23, 108, 199 Russo-Japanese War, 22, 42 Sagamore Hill, 8, 24f, 25, 32, 40, 44 Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 51 Santo Domingo, 22, 174 Scribner’s (magazine), 26 Senate, U.S., 12, 19, 24, 173–174 Shakespeare, William, 58 Shaw, George Bernard, 3 Sidon, 50 Sioux Falls, South Dakota, 184 Smithsonian Institution, 26 Sorbonne, 27 Southwest, U.S., 51 Spain, 8, 40 Spanish American War, 8, 19, 40–41 Spanish architecture, 51 Square Deal (the), 3, 5, 15–16 Stevenson, Adlai E., 12, 41 Straus, Oscar S., 14 Supreme Court, U.S., 13 Syracuse, 172 Tacitus, 48 Taft, Williams Howard, 25, 26, 27–28, 32, 35, 43, 138 Texas, 178 Thackery, William Makepeace, 53 Thoreau, Henry David, 52 Three Tetons, Wyoming, 128 Thucydides, 48

Tolstoy, Leo, 54 Trajan, 176 Trevelyan, George O., 2 Tyre, 50 United Mine Workers, 14 United States of America, 18, 22, 23, 26, 46–47, 64, 73, 78, 109, 132, 140, 171, 188 Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 83 Venezuela, 22, 41 Vice Presidency, U.S., 12, 41, 110, 183 Virginia, 199 Wall Street, 11, 15, 25 War Department, U.S., 25 Washington, Booker T., 41, 189–190 Washington, George, 25, 83, 132 Washington, D.C., 8, 193 Western, U.S., 46, 178, 192–193 Wharton, Edith, 26 White House, 11, 17, 20, 25, 26, 28, 34, 41, 43, 120, 145, 193 White House Governors’ Conference, 16, 43 Wilson, Woodrow, 3, 32–35, 43, 44, 146 Woodruff, Timothy L., 12f World War I, 2, 34–35, 44, 146 Yellowstone, Wyoming, 17f, 128, 197 Yosemite, California, 18f, 128, 197

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