Theodore Roosevelt

“ 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. 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 fibre of our whole citizenship. ”

“ I have spoken of but one or two laws which, in my judgment, it is advisable to enact as part of the general scheme for making the interference of the National Government more effective in securing justice and fair dealing as between man and man here in the United States. Let me add, however, that while it is necessary to have legislation when conditions arise where we can only cope with evils through the joint action of all of us, yet that we can never afford to forget that in the last analysis the all-important factor for each of us must be his own individual character. ”

“ 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 for national regulation in those matters which necessarily affect the Nation as a whole. It seems to me that such questions as national sovereignty and States' rights need to be treated not empirically or academically, but from the standpoint of the interests of the people as a whole. ”

“ Once for all, let me say that, as far as I am concerned, and for the eighteen months of my administration that remain, there will be no change in the policy we have steadily pursued, nor let-up in the effort to secure the honest observance of the law, for I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule this government—the people through their governmental agents, or a few ruthless and determined men, whose wealth makes them particularly formidable, because they are behind the breastworks of corporate organization. ”

“ But, as is well known, in a criminal action the law is strictly construed 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 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. ”

“ 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. If we are men we will pass by with contemptuous disdain alike the advisers who would seek to lead us into the paths of ignoble ease and those who would teach us to admire successful wrongdoing. ”

“ 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 to have and to develop. ”

“ We cannot 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. ”

“ As a matter of expediency in enforcing the law against a great corporation, we have continually to weigh the arguments pro and con as to whether a prosecution can successfully be entered into, and as to whether we can be successful in a criminal action against the chief individuals in the corporation, and if not whether we can at least be successful in a civil action against the corporation itself. ”

“ 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. When in addition to moral responsibility these men have a legal responsibility which can be proved so as to impress a judge and jury, then the department will strain every nerve to reach them criminally. ”

“ But there is a growing determination that no man shall amass a great fortune by special privilege, by chicanery and wrongdoing, so far as it is in the power of legislation to prevent; and that the fortune when 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 cannot produce wholesome results. ”

“ So he is but a poor leader of the people, but a poor national 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. ”

“ That liberty of conscience which he demanded for himself, we now realize must 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 ”

“ The 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. ”

“ 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 lofty feeling. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There exists no more sordid and unlovely type of social development than a plutocracy, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In most cases such effort fails to correct the real abuses of which the corporation 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. ”

“ 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 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 today as they did their work in the yesterdays that have vanished. ”

“ In dealing with any totally new set of conditions there must at the outset be hesitation and experiment. Such has been our experience in dealing with the enormous concentration of capital employed in interstate business. Not only the legislatures but the courts and the people need gradually to be educated so that they may see what the real wrongs are and what the real remedies. ”

“ The Puritan owed his extraordinary success in subduing this continent and making it the foundation for a social life of ordered liberty primarily to the fact that he combined in a very remarkable degree both the power of individual initiative, of individual self-help, and the power of acting in combination with his fellows;Puritan ethos and that furthermore he joined to a high heart that shrewd common-sense which saves a man from the besetting sins of the visionary and the doctrinaire. ”

“ 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. That burden should be distributed and not placed solely upon the weakest individual, the one least able to carry it. ”

“ Almost every big business concern is engaged in interstate commerce, and such a concern must not be allowed by a dexterous shifting of position, as has been too often the case in the past, to escape thereby all responsibility either to State or Nation. ”

“ 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.New challenges 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 strong effort resolutely made and crowned by high achievement. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. Such a view is wicked whether applied to capitalist or labor leader, to rich man or poor man. ”

“ There are unfortunately a certain number of our fellow countrymen who seem to accept the view that unless a man can be 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. ”

“ I very earnestly hope that the legislation which deals with the regulation of corporations engaged in interstate business will also deal with the rights and interests of the wage-workers employed by those corporations. 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. ”

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

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

“ 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. ”

“ We have to take this feeling into account when we are debating whether it is possible to get a conviction in a criminal proceeding against some rich trust magnate, many of whose actions are severely to be condemned from the moral and social standpoint, but no one of whose actions seems clearly to establish such technical guilt as will ensure a conviction. ”

“ I also hope that there will be legislation increasing the power of the national government to deal with certain matters concerning the health of our people everywhere; the federal authorities, for instance, should join with all the state authorities in warring against the dreadful scourge of tuberculosis. Your own state government, here in Massachusetts, deserves high praise for the action it has taken in these public health matters during the last few years ”