Theodore Roosevelt

“ Let us see to it that we do not lose what is more important still; that we do not lose the Puritan’s iron sense of duty, his unbending, unflinching will to do the right as it was given him to see the right. It is a good thing that life should gain in sweetness, but only provided that it does not lose in strength. Ease and rest and pleasure are good things, but only if they come as the reward of work well done, of a good fight well won, of [11] strong effort resolutely made and crowned by high achievement. ”

“ But, as is well known, in a criminal action the law is strictly construed [35] in favor of the defendant, and in our country, at least, both judge and jury are far more inclined to consider his rights than they are the interests of the general public; while in addition it is always true that a man’s general practices may be so bad that a civil action will lie when it may not be possible to convict him of any one criminal act. ”

“ The utterly changed conditions of our national life necessitate changes in certain of our laws, of our governmental methods. Our federal system of government is based upon the theory of leaving to each community, to each State, the control over those things which affect only its own members and which the people of the locality themselves can best grapple with, while providing [22] for national regulation in those matters which necessarily affect the nation as a whole. ”

“ So he is but a poor leader of the people, but a poor national [12] adviser, who seeks to make the nation in any way subordinate effort to ease, who would teach the people not to prize as the greatest blessing the chance to do any work, no matter how hard, if it becomes their duty to do it. To the sons of the Puritans it is almost needless to say that the lesson above all others which Puritanism can teach this nation is the all-importance of the resolute performance of duty. ”

“ We can not as a nation be too profoundly grateful for the fact that the Puritan has stamped his influence so deeply on our national life. We need have but scant patience with the men who now rail at the Puritan’s faults. ”

“ It is a necessary thing to have good laws, good institutions; but the most necessary of all things is to have a high quality of individual citizenship. This does not mean that we can afford to neglect legislation. [58] It will be highly disastrous if we permit ourselves to be misled by the pleas of those who see in an unrestricted individualism the all-sufficient panacea for social evils; but it will be even more disastrous to adopt the opposite panacea of any socialistic system which would destroy all individualism, which would root out the fiber of our whole citizenship. ”

“ But there is a growing determination that no man shall amass a great fortune by [25] special privilege, by chicanery and wrongdoing, so far as it is in the power of legislation to prevent; and that a fortune, however amassed, shall not have a business use that is antisocial. Most large corporations do a business that is not confined to any one State. Experience has shown that the effort to control these corporations by mere State action can not produce wholesome results. ”

“ So it is with this movement for securing justice toward all men, and equality of opportunity so far as it can be secured by governmental action. The [60] rich man who with hard arrogance declines to consider the rights and the needs of those who are less well off, and the poor man who excites or indulges in envy and hatred of those who are better off, are alike alien to the spirit of our national life. ”

“ There is no use in our coming here to pay homage to the men who founded this nation unless we first of all come in the spirit of trying to do our work to-day as they did their work in the yesterdays that have vanished. ”

“ That liberty of conscience which he demanded for himself, we now realize must [8] be as freely accorded to others as it is resolutely insisted upon for ourselves. The splendid qualities which he left to his children, we other Americans who are not of Puritan blood also claim as our heritage. You, sons of the Puritans, and we, who are descended from races whom the Puritans would have deemed alien—we are all Americans together. We all feel the same pride in the genesis, in the history, of our people ”

“ If it were in my power to promise the people of this land anything, I would not promise them pleasure. I would promise them that stern happiness which comes from the sense of having done in practical fashion a difficult work which was worth doing. ”

“ Certain socialistic leaders propose to redistribute the world’s goods by refusing to thrift and energy and industry their proper superiority over folly and idleness and sullen envy. Such legislation would merely, in the words of the president of Columbia University, “wreck the world’s efficiency for the purpose of redistributing the world’s discontent.” We should all of us [64] work heart and soul for the real and permanent betterment which will lift our democratic civilization to a higher level of safety and usefulness. ”

“ Such betterment can come only by the slow, steady growth of the spirit which metes a generous, but not a sentimental, justice to each man on his merits as a man, and which recognizes the fact that the highest and deepest happiness for the individual lies not in selfishness but in service. ”

“ The materialism of such a view, whether it finds its expression in the life of a man who accumulates a vast fortune in ways that are repugnant to every instinct of generosity and of fair dealing, or whether it finds its expression in the vapidly useless and self-indulgent life of the inheritor of that fortune, is contemptible in the eyes of all men capable of a thrill of [62] lofty feeling. ”

“ Those professed friends of liberty who champion license are the worst foes of liberty and tend by the reaction their violence causes to throw the Government back into the hands of the men who champion corruption and tyranny in the name of order. ”

“ Many men of large wealth have been guilty of conduct which from the moral standpoint is criminal, and their misdeeds are to a peculiar degree reprehensible, because those committing them have no excuse of want, of poverty, of weakness and ignorance to offer as partial atonement. ”

“ Any effective action on the part of the Government is always objected to, as a matter of course, by the wrongdoers, by the beneficiaries of the wrongdoers, and by their champions; and often one of the most effective ways of attacking the action of the Government is by objecting to practical action upon the ground that it does not go far enough. ”

“ The first law, the so-called Sherman law, has filled a useful place, for it bridges over the transition period until the American people shall definitely make up [32] its mind that it will exercise over the great corporations that thoroughgoing and radical control which it is certain ultimately to find necessary. The principle of the Sherman law so far as it prohibits combinations which, whether because of their extent or of their character, are harmful to the public must always be preserved. ”

“ In the man of great wealth who has earned his wealth honestly and [51] uses it wisely we recognize a good citizen of the best type, worthy of all praise and respect. Business can only be done under modern conditions through corporations, and our purpose is heartily to favor the corporations that do well. ”

“ But I desire no less emphatically to have it understood that we have sanctioned and will sanction no action of a vindictive type, and above all no action which shall inflict great and unmerited suffering upon innocent stockholders or upon the public as a whole. Our purpose is to act with the minimum of harshness compatible with attaining our ends. ”

“ We have gained some things that the Puritan had not—we of this generation, we of the twentieth century, here in this great Republic; but we are also in danger of losing certain things which the Puritan had and which we can by no manner of means afford to lose. We have gained a joy of living which he had not, and which it is a good thing for every people [10] to have and to develop. ”

“ There is no objection in the minds of this people to any man’s earning any amount of money if he does it honestly and fairly, if he gets it as the result of special skill and enterprise, as a reward of ample service actually rendered. ”

“ In most cases such effort fails to correct the real abuses of which the corporation [26] is or may be guilty; while in other cases the effort is apt to cause either hardship to the corporation itself, or else hardship to neighboring States which have not tried to grapple with the problem in the same manner; and of course we must be as scrupulous to safeguard the rights of the corporations as to exact from them in return a full measure of justice to the public. I believe in a national incorporation law for corporations engaged in interstate business. ”

“ It is monstrous that a man or woman who is crippled in an industry, even as the result of taking what are the necessary risks of the occupation, should be required to bear the whole burden of the loss. ”

“ If there was no other way to secure conformity with the rule of right, then he smote down the transgressor with the iron of his wrath. The spirit of the Puritan was a spirit which never shrank from regulation of conduct if such regulation was necessary for the public weal ”

“ There is unfortunately a certain number of our fellow-countrymen who seem to accept the view that unless a man can be [36] proved guilty of some particular crime he shall be counted a good citizen, no matter how infamous the life he has led, no matter how pernicious his doctrines or his practices. ”

“ There exists no more sordid and unlovely type of social development than a plutocracy, [61] for there is a peculiar unwholesomeness in a social and governmental ideal where wealth by and of itself is held up as the greatest good. ”

“ Experience has shown that it is necessary to exercise a far more efficient control than at present over the business use of those vast fortunes, chiefly corporate, which are used (as under modern conditions they almost invariably are) in interstate business. When the Constitution [24] was created none of the conditions of modern business existed. They are wholly new and we must create new agencies to deal effectively with them. ”

“ He could hold his own in the rough workaday world without clamorous insistence upon being helped by others, and yet he could combine with others whenever it became necessary to do a job which could not be as well done by any one man individually. ”

“ The Administration appreciates that liberal but honest profits for legitimate promoting, good salaries, ample salaries, for able and upright management, and generous dividends for capital employed either in founding or continuing [52] wholesome business ventures, are the factors necessary for successful corporate activity and therefore for generally prosperous business conditions. ”

“ Men of other races, the Frenchman and the Spaniard, the Dutchman, the German, the Scotchman, the Irishman, and the Swede, made settlements within what is now the United States, during the colonial period of our history and before the Declaration of Independence ”

“ This is the view announced from time to time with clamorous insistence, now by a group of predatory capitalists, now by a group of sinister anarchistic leaders and agitators, whenever a special champion of either class, no matter how evil his general life, is acquitted of some one specific crime. [37] Such a view is wicked whether applied to capitalist or labor leader, to rich man or poor man ”

“ Action was taken by the Congress last year limiting the number of hours that railway employees should be employed. The law is a good one; but if in practice it proves necessary to strengthen it, it must be strengthened. ”