Theodore Roosevelt

“ Finally, and what is in my view, really the most important thing of all, it is our duty, so far as we are able, to try to help upward our weaker brothers. Just as there has been a gradual growth of the ethical element in the relations of one individual to another, so that with all the faults of our Christian civilization it yet remains true that we are, no matter [14] how slowly, more and more coming to recognize the duty of bearing one another’s burdens, similarly I believe that the ethical element is by degrees entering into the dealings of one nation with another. ”

“ The mere fact that we are protecting the custom-houses and collecting the revenue with efficiency and honesty has completely discouraged all revolutionary movement, while it has already produced such [23] an increase in the revenues that the Government is actually getting more from the forty-five per cent that we turn over to it than it got formerly when it took the entire revenue. This is enabling the poor harrassed people of Santo Domingo once more to turn their attention to industry and to be free from the curse of interminable revolutionary disturbance. ”

“ When, as is now the case, many of the great corporations consistently strain the last resources of legal technicality to avoid obedience to a law for the reasonable regulation of their business, the only way effectively to meet this attitude on their part is to give to the Executive Department of the Government a more direct and therefore more efficient supervision and control of their management. ”

“ Doctrine in some way inimical to their interests. Now let it be understood once for all that no just and orderly government on this continent has anything to fear from us. There are certain of the republics south of us which have already reached such a point of stability, order, and prosperity that they are themselves, although as yet hardly consciously, among the guarantors of this doctrine. No stable and growing American republic wishes to see some great non-American military power [8] acquire territory in its neighborhood. ”

“ Santo Domingo has now made an appeal to us to help it in turn, and not only every principle of wisdom but every generous [18] instinct within us bids us respond to the appeal. The conditions in Santo Domingo have for a number of years grown from bad to worse until recently all society was on the verge of dissolution. Fortunately just at this time a wise ruler sprang up in Santo Domingo, who, with his colleagues, saw the dangers threatening their beloved country, and appealed to the friendship of their great and powerful neighbor to help them. ”

“ But while insisting with all emphasis upon this, it is also true that experience has shown that when there is no governmental restraint or supervision, some of the exceptional men use their energies, [50] not in ways that are for the common good, but in ways which tell against this common good; and that by so doing they not only wrong smaller and less able men—whether wage-workers or small producers and traders—but force other men of exceptional abilities themselves to do what is wrong under penalty of falling behind in the keen race for success. ”

“ In speaking against the abuses committed by certain very wealthy corporations or individuals, and of the necessity of seeking so far as it can safely be done to remedy these abuses, there is always danger lest what is said may be misinterpreted as an attack upon men of means generally. Now it can not too often be repeated in a Republic like ours that the only way by which it is possible permanently to benefit the condition of the less able and less fortunate, is so to shape our policy that [46] all industrious and efficient people who act decently may be benefited ”

“ The laws must be conceived and executed in a spirit of sanity and justice, and with exactly as much regard for the rights of the big man as for the rights of the little man—treating big man and little man exactly alike. ”

“ We can not permanently adhere to the Monroe Doctrine unless we succeed in making it evident in the first place that we do not intend to treat it in any shape or way as an excuse for aggrandizement on our part at the expense of the republics to the south of us ”

“ A famine or a plague in one country brings much sympathy and some assistance from other countries. Moreover, we are now beginning to recognize [15] that weaker peoples have a claim upon us, even when the appeal is made, not to our emotions by some sudden calamity, but to our consciences by a long continuing condition of affairs. ”

“ Our own Government has always refused to enforce such contractual obligations on behalf of its citizens by the appeal to arms. It is much to be wished that all foreign governments would take the same view. But at present this country would certainly not be willing to go to war to prevent a foreign government from collecting a just debt or to back up some one of our sister republics in a refusal to pay just debts ”

“ The effort to prevent all restraint of competition, whether harmful or beneficial, has been ill-judged; what is needed is not so much the effort to prevent combination as [31] a vigilant and effective control of the combinations formed, so as to secure just and equitable dealing on their part alike toward the public generally, toward their smaller competitors, and toward the wage-workers in their employ. ”

“ Under the course taken, stability and [26] order and all the benefits of peace are at last coming to Santo Domingo, all danger of foreign intervention has ceased, and there is at last a prospect that all creditors will get justice, no more and no less. If the arrangement is terminated, chaos will follow; and if chaos follows, sooner or later this Government may be involved in serious difficulties with foreign governments over the island, or else may be forced itself to intervene in the island in some unpleasant fashion. ”

“ The man of great productive capacity who gets rich through guiding the labor of hundreds or thousands of other men does so, as a rule, by enabling their labor to produce more [48] than it would without his guidance, and both he and they share in the benefit, so that even if the share be unequal it must never be forgotten that they too are really benefited by his success. ”

“ Of course there is always the danger of abuse if legislation of this type is approached in a hysterical or sentimental spirit, or, above all, if it is approached in a spirit of envy and hatred toward men of wealth.
We must not try to go too fast, under penalty of finding that we may be going in the wrong direction ”

“ I earnestly believe that this is true of only a relatively small portion of the very rich men engaged in handling the largest corporations in the country; but the attitude of these comparatively few men does undoubtedly harm the country, and above all harm the men of large means, by the just, but sometimes misguided, popular indignation to which it gives rise. ”

“ If, under such circumstances, the less fortunate man is moved by envy of his more fortunate brother to strike at the conditions under which they have both, though unequally, prospered, he may rest assured that while the result may be damaging to the other man, it will be even more damaging to himself. ”

“ In our industrial and social system the interests of all men are so closely intertwined that in the immense majority of cases the straight-dealing man who by ingenuity and industry benefits himself must also benefit others. ”

“ We have already good reason to believe that some of the creditors who do not dare expose their claims to honest scrutiny are endeavoring to stir up sedition in the island, and are also endeavoring to stir up opposition to the treaty both in Santo Domingo and here, trusting that in one place or the other it may be possible to secure either the rejection of the treaty or else its amendment in such fashion as to be tantamount to rejection. ”

“ Not only the men in control of these corporations, but the business world generally, ought to realize that such conduct is in every way perilous, and constitutes [33] a menace to the nation generally, and especially to the people of great property. ”

“ It forbids the territorial encroachment of non-American powers on American soil. Its purpose is partly to secure this Nation against seeing great military powers obtain new footholds in the Western Hemisphere, and partly to [4] secure to our fellow-republics south of us the chance to develop along their own lines without being oppressed or conquered by non-American powers. As we have grown more and more powerful our advocacy of this doctrine has been received with more and more respect ”