Owen Wister

“ Roosevelt's message to congress of December, 1905, had laid much stress upon the importance of arbitration as making for international peace, and Mr. Root's journey to South America six months later was undertaken with this object. His intellect, his skill and his address brought about the happiest results. It is too often our uncouth habit to commit our international affairs to hands partially or wholly unversed in the usages of civilization. But even the most well-meaning bull can accomplish but little good in a china shop, and diplomacy is a china shop, if ever there was one. ”

“ Owing partly to the unusual and picturesque personnel of the enlisted men, comprising young fellows from Newport and cowboys from the West, united in a brotherhood of patriotism and adventure, each discovering that one was as good as the other, and also partly owing to the personality and the capabilities of Roosevelt and Wood, this regiment became undoubtedly one of the popular heroes of the Spanish war. Even the name of Dewey will hardly live more upon the lips and in the hearts of the people than the name of the Rough Riders. ”

“ Like most of his predecessors in office, he comes of a family which has been American since early colonial times. For two hundred and fifty years New York has been the native soil of the Roosevelts. Since they made their beginnings in the colonies, they have been plentifully represented in public life and in good works; and a study of former Roosevelts shows them to have attained distinction as fighters, as writers, in politics, and in philanthropy. It would seem that President Roosevelt drew from all these ancestral sources the qualities that have so forcibly marked his career. ”

“ Among the many vital themes for legislative attention, such as anarchy, the so-called trusts, the army, the navy, the tariff, and civil-service reform — to mention no more — there was vagueness in only one, namely, the question of ship subsidy. Perhaps no human mind could achieve so much expression of opinion about existing conditions and future policy without some slight dislocation of logic somewhere. In speaking of the Philippines, the message says: “What has taken us thirty generations to achieve we can not expect to see another race accomplish out of hand.” ”

“ Roosevelt's name, than any of the above mentioned “accomplishments” of his first administration, not excepting the incalculably important Panama incident. Both steps were, at bottom, outcomes of the same vigilance; Mr. Roosevelt is more avowedly and keenly alive than any other patriot in public life to the sinister menace to the stability of our government which lies in combinations, whether they be combinations of “labor” or of “capital.” ”

“ Roosevelt's second term, the Forest Reserve Bill passed by the House March 1, and the ratification by the senate of the Canadian Waterways Treaty, March 4, were in harmony with his policies, for many months the relations between him and both houses had been increasingly discordant, and he may be said to have stepped out of the White House amid lightnings and thunders. There was a day when George Washington swore furiously at a cabinet meeting that he would rather be in his grave than endure the malignity of the press and the politicians. ”

“ And he then more than intimated that members of the Secret Service were needed to watch the conduct of our legislators at Washington. In consequence of his laws which impeded and his words which stung a great many “undesirable citizens,” a sea of abuse now arose against him as violent as that which once assailed Washington and Lincoln. Some one has collected the vocabulary of this language; and to read it is sufficient proof that Mr. Roosevelt is a great man; no other kind of man could arouse such prolonged vilification. ”

“ Roosevelt found himself a national figure, and also the center of popular enthusiasm in his own state. It was not possible for his political enemies to stand up against the fervor which the name of Roosevelt instantly aroused upon any occasion; and, little to the relish of these politicians, they were obliged to accept him as the candidate of the republican party for governor of New York. In the fall of 1898, at the age of thirty-nine, Theodore Roosevelt was chosen to this office. It is singular to contemplate his two kinds of enemies. ”

“ Roosevelt's “Strike Commission,” which not even his friends have had the wit to point out. His apparent siding with “labor” on that occasion led “labor” to commit so many arrogant outrages that the scales fell from the hitherto blind and sentimental public eye, and it was seen that “labor” could become just as dangerous a public enemy as could “capital.” At all events, to sum up, Mr. Roosevelt was in November, 1904, elected president by the largest majority which the history of our nation records; upon which he announced that he considered this his second term. ”

“ All such machinery is double edged and no machinery ever saved a state; good citizens alone do this. Those opposed to female suffrage denounce him also. But these are minor enemies and opponents; they serve to draw lesser or external traits and opinions of the man. Nobody claims for him the dignity of Washington or the patience of Lincoln: but something he has of the far-seeing sagacity of the one and of the humane spirit of the other. He can be magnanimous often, and ruthless sometimes. ”

“ Rich and poor become dangerous alike whenever they are able to defy the law (as the rich attempted in the Northern Securities) or to make the law not apply to themselves (as in the exemption of labor unions from the operation of the Sherman anti-trust law — the very same which the rich finally had to obey in the Northern Securities case) ; it is neither riches nor poverty, but unchecked power, which constitutes the evil and the menace to the State. If analysis of Mr. Roosevelt's enemies be made to-day, these will be found to fall into two chief groups, apparently contradictory ”

“ Roosevelt's career. Upon Mr. Blaine's becoming the republican candidate for president, those friends of Mr. Roosevelt whose faith in him had been based upon his political independence were turned against him because of his adherence to his party's choice. Although he has been known to say that he does not count party allegiance among the Ten Commandments, it is nevertheless his belief that breaking with one's party should be a step of the last resort; that in nine cases out of ten more effective good can be rendered by remaining with one's party even while not in total agreement with it. ”

“ This sort of mistake, sometimes grave, sometimes not important, has always been forgiven by the people, because they know Mr. Roosevelt. A sometimes misleading enthusiasm about friends, an occasional failure to judge the character of a man or the propriety of an act, do not impair the popular conviction that at bottom Mr. Roosevelt is generally right. ”

“ We differ from England in many ways, being less civilized and less hypocritical. Our impulse to make a clean breast of it and rise to higher things is our most precious national characteristic, and no president has ever surpassed Mr. Roosevelt in fostering it. ”

“ The close of 1881 saw Theodore Roosevelt a member of the New York Assembly from the Twenty-first district, and identified so closely with the cause of decent politics, and so plainly a type of clean patriot, as to win from his opponents, the routine politicians, the men with no creed save their pocket, the name of Silk Stockings. ”

“ One Chinese or Japanese servant in a house does the work of two or three servants of other nationalities, and it is the same with out-door labor. This has been true ever since George Washington characterized the American farmer as the most shiftless and wasteful that he knew. But California's contention that her state is for her own people and not for aliens, be they better or worse than native citizens, is not easily answered. ”

“ But that any State of the Union can at any moment disregard and impair the utility of a treaty made with a foreign nation by the United States is something about which opinion cannot be divided.
After his private audience at Tokio with the Emperor of Japan, October 2, 1907, when the California difficulty was smoothed down, Mr. Taft attended the first Philippine Congress, which he opened on October 16. On December 23 he delivered at St. Petersburg an address on the subject of world peace, and on the 20th he finished at New York his journey round the world. ”

“ Roosevelt's second term, significant chiefly in the number of them which provide for arbitration and in the fact that they are so numerous because our points of contact with the rest of the world have increased so rapidly since the Spanish War of 1898 — apart from these, Mr. Roosevelt's second term is marked strongly by three main trends of policy:
He did not wish corporations and financiers to be hobbled, but to be properly harnessed.
He did not wish the laboring man to be a pampered pet, but to be treated as a human being by those who employed him. ”

“ With what stability it will rest upon a kaleidoscope of tribes and peoples speaking neither one another's language nor our own is a question very likely to concern the United States at some not distant day. ”

“ The labor unions have become a worse enemy to California than the Southern Pacific railroad, and the advantages which they took over a prostrate community at the time of the earthquake in 1906 are almost unparalleled in bestial greed. But the only point which can be touched on here is, that in his message of December 3, 1906, to the 59th Congress, Mr. Roosevelt declared that the Japanese in San Francisco should be treated justly and their rights must be enforced. ”

“ Mr. Roosevelt added twenty thousand places to the scope of the reform law, and so admirable was his work altogether that President Harrison has said of it: “If he had no other record than his service as an employee of the civil service commission, he would be deserving of the nation's gratitude and confidence.” Mr. Cleveland, upon succeeding Mr. Harrison as president, retained Roosevelt, and thus his work continued for two years more, until May 1, 1895, when he resigned to become president of the Police board of New York city. ”

“ In January, 1908, he issued an executive order defining the powers of the Isthmian Canal Commission and its chairmen. This was merely a comprehensive revision of the provisions of November 17, 1906, and subsequent orders. In March, 1908, some troubles of the Republic of Panama were pacified by Mr. Taft, but in July, as the election then approached, marines were sent to the Isthmus. What changes may come to the world in consequence of the canal cannot be at present imagined. Perhaps our destiny is to be more affected by it than anything directly due to an act of Mr. Roosevelt's. ”

“ If the Democrats are equal to the occasion they will render the Progressives superfluous. But Democrats have a habit of not being equal to the occasion. If the Progressives show a judgment as cool as their emotions are warm, they may prove as great as the Republican party was once, the phoenix from its ashes. ”

“ That this law today does less good than it ought, and that our only strict inspection is of meats exported to foreign countries because foreign countries also subject the meat to inspection, is due to the eternal vigilance of American rascals and the eternal inattentiveness of the American people. ”

“ But it must be stated by way of reminder how greatly he deprecated the notion of being taken from his work in New York for any reason whatever. Events, however, are stronger than any man's opinion; and in looking back upon the popular determination that Theodore Roosevelt should be the next vice-president, the religious mind is tempted to see in this the hand of a foreseeing and guiding Providence. The attention of our country has too often been careless in the choice of a vice-president. ”

“ On March 4, 1907, was passed “An Act to promote the safety of employees and travelers upon railroads by limiting the hours of service of employees thereon.” It made unlawful the permitting of any employee to remain on duty for more than sixteen consecutive hours. An Act of May 30, 1908, provided for compensation for injuries to Federal employees.
The month of June, 1906, is associated with another memorable step taken by Mr. Roosevelt in the direction of humane policy. It is the second time in our history that a novel has been the quickener of public changes. ”

“ A year later, March 2, 1907, an act was approved providing that the Chief Justice of the United States, the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and their successors in office, together with a representative of labor and a representative of capital, and two persons to represent the general public to be appointed by the President, should be trustees of this Foundation, to hold the money and any other sums given for its purpose, namely, to obtain a better understanding between employers and employees. ”

“ These provisions against disorders did not end disorders forever, but they furnished better means for dealing with them. The first arbitration treaty between the United States and South America was that signed by Secretary Root and Mr. Pardo, the Peruvian Minister. We cannot here dwell upon the various troubles between ourselves and the South American countries or the troubles between themselves; but the adventurer Castro, of Venezuela, should not be wholly passed over. ”

“ By it railroads are held liable to their employees for death or injury caused by the negligence of the employers. This ended a doctrine of the common-law — the doctrine of “assumed risk” — established in days before steam and electricity had totally changed the conditions of transportation. The repeated messages of Mr. Roosevelt on this subject are responsible for the enlightened advance marked by the Act of 1908. These messages were also concerned with the necessity to limit the power of the courts to enforce injunctions, and with the prohibition of child labor. ”