Theodore Roosevelt

“ And now, friends, that is all I have got to say of the personalities in this contest. I have not been interested in them in any shape or way. I have no personal feeling whatever in the matter. I will support any man as long as that man renders service to the people of the United States. [Great applause and cheers.] And when he ceases rendering service I shall cease to support him. [Great applause.]
APPEAL TO THE PATRIOTS.
And now, friends, to you men and women of Massachusetts, I wish to make as strong an appeal as I know how. I come from another State. ”

“ And now, friends, when a workman’s-compensation act comes up and the question arises whether a brakeman, a switchman, any man of the kind should be compensated for the loss of life or limb in taking charge of the trains in which you and I travel in comfort in the Pullman cars—when that comes up I think of my feelings when I jumped from car to car on the top of that cattle train, and when a miss or slip meant the loss of a leg or an arm or the loss of my life, and I know how the brakeman feels in such a case. ”

“ In New York I know that the court of appeals is composed of upright, well-meaning men.
DO NOT KNOW VITAL NEEDS.
But the courts in those States have been composed of men who know nothing whatever of the vital needs of the great bulk of their fellow Americans, and who, unlike your courts in Massachusetts, have endeavored to impose their own outworn philosophy of life upon the millions of their fellow citizens. ”

“ I hold that if it be true—if it be true—that in this country fishers and plowmen and choppers are to constitute a State, it must be true that they shall be permitted to impose their ideas of common justice, of common decency, upon their public servants, and that the public servants are in very fact the servants and not the masters of the community. ”

“ I ask, at least, that we decline to commit ourselves to a policy of foolish Bourbonism; that instead of denying the need of any change in our laws, in our social and industrial system, to meet the changing needs of the times, we take the lead in making every change that is necessary in order to make our constitutions and the body of our law enacted under the Constitution instruments for justice as between man and man, instruments for getting justice for the average citizenship of the American Republic. ”

“ Now in New York those worthy, well-meaning, elderly judges of the court of appeals have never had such an experience in their lives.
They don’t know. They don’t visualize to themselves how that brakeman feels. They are not able to present to their minds the risks incident to the ordinary, everyday performance of his duties. ”

“ All I ask is that, in that kind of a case, the ten millions of people of New York State shall not be balked of justice, but, after ample time for due deliberation on their part, shall be permitted to vote in this case whether the Supreme Court of the United States and the State courts of a dozen other States, like Iowa and Washington, are right, or whether the amiable elderly gentlemen of the New York Court of Appeals are right. ”

“ He is describing the birth of Massachusetts, the birth of the United States, and he describes this country as being foreordained through the ages to show the kings, the aristocracy, the powers of privilege in the Old World, that here in the New World we could have a true and real democracy, a democracy where fishers and choppers and plowmen constitute a State. ”

“ Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time, and the proper way to conserve all of the present system of our civilization that is best worth conserving is to alter that which causes a heavy strain to come upon the rest. ”

“ If the train stopped we would jump out with our poles, and we would run up along the length of the cars to poke up the cattle that had lain down, because if we let them lie down the others would trample them to death. ”

“ Those amiable, well-meaning, excellently intentioned judges, who, doubtless, did not in their whole circle of acquaintances know one woman who was working in a factory or a sweatshop, said that they would stand “fearlessly” for what?
“Fearlessly” for the right of the big factory owner and the small sweatshop owner to earn their money by working women, haggard, hour after hour, day after day, night after night, in the factory and sweatshop. ”

“ We have against us only the silk-stocking man who is not quite confident enough in himself to believe in himself, who is not quite confident enough in himself to believe that he can hold his own [7] with the rest of his fellow-Americans without advantage on his part. ”

“ In the late contest we had with us a considerable proportion of the plain Democracy, but we lost almost all the old silk stocking, exclusive Whigery. I do not mean that we lost all the Whigs, but only those of the nice, exclusive, silk-stocking type. [Laughter.]
Now that was written by Abraham Lincoln 54 years ago, and it has just happened in your own city, and in mine, and in the country generally at the present moment.
In consequence, friends, we have against us the money; we have against us the politicians ”

“ They don’t know the brakeman. They don’t know what it is—I am speaking of a case I know—they don’t know what it means when a brakeman loses both legs, and the following winter—I am speaking of a case I know, my own personal experience—the following winter his wife can’t go out because she can’t purchase shoes if she purchases shoes to send the children to school in. ”

“ Taft, I am more fortunate than Mr. Taft in my friends. [A voice: “You bet your life.” Cheers.]
WILLING TO LOSE WITH A GOOD MAN.
When Mr. Taft came here on Thursday and I came here on Friday, Mr. Taft came here having lost the State of Illinois; I came here having lost the State of New Hampshire. [Laughter.] In Illinois Mr. Taft’s chief lieutenant had been Mr. Lorimer. ”