All commerce on a scale sufficiently large to warrant any control over it by Government is nowadays inter-State or foreign commerce; and until this fact is heartily acknowledged, in particular by both courts and legislative bodies…
Teddy Roosevelt
The Public Record
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. A member of the Republican Party, he was born on October 27, 1858, in New York. Roosevelt was a prominent leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for domestic policies that included trust-busting, regulation of corporations, and conservation of natural resources. His administration is noted for significant reforms and the establishment of national parks and forests.
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But there are large classes of cases where only the authority of the National Government will secure the rights of the people, and where this is the case I am a convinced and a thoroughgoing believer in the rights of the National…
There are points in which this governmental aid can best be rendered by the States; that is, where the exercise of States’ rights helps to secure popular rights, and as to these I believe in States’ rights.
Now, to preserve the general welfare, to see to it that the rights of the public are protected, and the liberty of the individual secured and encouraged as long as consistent with this welfare, and curbed when it becomes inconsistent…
We are for the liberty of the individual up to, but not beyond, the point where it becomes inconsistent with the welfare of the community as a whole.
We do not intend to discourage individual excellence by improperly diminishing the reward for that individual excellence; on the contrary, our desire is to see that the fullest reward is given to the men of exceptional abilities, up to the…
No farm should be so used that the soil is permitted to depreciate in value; no forest so used as permanently to impair its productivity.
It is rapidly becoming a well-settled policy of this people that we of the present generation hold the land in part as trustees for the next generation, and not exclusively for our own selfish enjoyment.
In the second place, so far as possible, these resources must be kept for the use of the whole people, and not handed over for exploitation to single individuals or groups of individuals.
In the first place, the actual destruction, or, if this is not possible, at any rate the needless waste, of the natural resources must be stopped.
As a people we are rather fond of criticising ourselves, and sometimes with very great justice; but even the most pessimistic critic should sometimes think of what is to our credit.
The success of the cruise, performed as it was without a single accident, immeasurably raised the prestige, not only of our fleet, but of our Nation; and was a distinct help to the cause of international peace.
No nation regarded the cruise as fraught with any menace of hostility to itself; and yet every nation accepted it as a proof that we were not only desirous ourselves to keep the peace, but able to prevent the peace being broken at our…
So far from this increase in naval strength representing on our part either a menace of aggression to weaker nations or a menace of war to stronger nations, it has told most powerfully for peace.
A nation such as ours cannot possibly play a great part in international affairs, cannot expect to be treated as of weight in either the Atlantic or the Pacific, or to have its voice as to the Monroe Doctrine or the management of the…
Now, there is no use of a nation claiming to be a great nation, unless it is prepared to play a great part.
They are shown in the deeds of the Nation; and especially in the two great feats which during the past decade have made the deepest impression abroad—the cruise of the battle fleet around the world, and the digging of the Panama Canal.
The pioneer days are over, save in a few places; and the more complex life of to-day calls for a greater variety of good qualities than were needed on the frontier.
The men who have made this great republic what it is, and especially the men who have turned it into a continental commonwealth, have possessed in the highest degree the great virile virtues of strength, courage, energy, and undaunted and…
In this great free democracy it behooves all the people so to bear themselves that, not with their lips only but in their lives, they shall show their fealty to the great truth pronounced of old—the truth that Righteousness exalteth a…
Yet surely it is the duty of every public man to try to make all of us keep in mind, and practice, the moralities essential to the welfare of the American people.
A certain type of rather thinly intellectual man sneers at these moralities as “commonplaces;” and base and evil men, selfish and shortsighted men, are immensely pleased to see them denounced and derided.
I realize entirely that in the last analysis, with the nation as with the individual, it is private character that counts for most.
The people as a whole can be benefited morally and materially by a system which shall permit of ample reward for exceptional efficiency, but which shall nevertheless secure to the average man who does his work faithfully and well, the…
Then we are free to seek not only the heaping up of material wealth, but a wise and generous distribution of such wealth so as to diminish grinding poverty, and, so far as may be, to equalize social and economic no less than political…
Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt
