Teddy Roosevelt

All Indians who are competent should receive the full rights of American citizenship.

At any rate, give Alaska some person whose business it shall be to speak with authority on her behalf to the Congress.

We have been paying all possible heed to the political and educational interests of the islands, but, important though these objects are, it is not less important that we should favor their industrial development.

Yet this development is one of the things most earnestly to be wished for in the interest of the islands themselves.

In the same way we cannot afford to allow our insular possessions to lag behind in industrial development from any twisted jealousy of business success.

In foreign affairs we cannot afford to put our people at a disadvantage with their competitors by in any way discriminating against the efficiency of our business organizations.

The big corporation has achieved its present position in the business world simply because it is the most effective instrument in business competition.

But it is particularly regrettable to allow any such jealousy to be developed when we are dealing either with our insular or with foreign affairs.

Elsewhere in this message I have spoken strongly against the jealousy of mere wealth, and especially of corporate wealth as such.

In the proper desire to prevent the islands being exploited by speculators and to have them develop in the interests of their own people an error has been made in refusing to grant sufficiently liberal terms to induce the investment of…

I wish to call the attention of the Congress to one question which affects our insular possessions generally; namely, the need of an increased liberality in the treatment of the whole franchise question in these islands.

I earnestly advocate the adoption of legislation which will explicitly confer American citizenship on all citizens of Porto Rico.

Our aim must be to develop the Territory on the same basis of stable citizenship as exists on this continent.

Hawaii shall never become a territory in which a governing class of rich planters exists by means of coolie labor.

No merely half-hearted effort to meet its problems as other American communities have met theirs can be accepted as final.

Many an American Commonwealth has been built up against odds equal to those that now confront Hawaii.

There are obstacles, and great obstacles, in the way of building up a representative American community in the Hawaiian Islands; but it is not in the American character to give up in the face of difficulty.

The status of servility can never again be tolerated on American soil.

This is the most important point in the Pacific to fortify in order to conserve the interests of this country.

The most encouraging feature of the whole situation has been the very great interest taken by the common people in education and the great increase in the number of enrolled students in the public schools.

The incident is another proof of the fact that if there has been any error as regards giving self-government in the Philippines it has been in the direction of giving it too quickly, not too slowly.

One effectual remedy for this state of things is to employ the minds and strengthen the moral fibre of the Indian women--the end to which the work of the field matron is especially directed.

Until the mothers are well started in the right direction we cannot reasonably expect much from the children who are soon to form an integral part of our American citizenship.

I call your attention with especial earnestness to this matter because it appeals not only to our judgment but to our sympathy; for the people on whose behalf I ask it are comparatively few in number, render incalculable service of a…

It is unjust for a great nation like this to permit these men to become totally disabled or to meet death in the performance of their hazardous duty and yet to give them no sort of reward.