What we should desire to find out is the individual quality of the individual man.
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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We cannot afford to consider whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether he is Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Japanese, Italian, Scandinavian, Slav, or Magyar.
We cannot afford to pay heed to whether he is of one creed or another, of one nation, or another.
If the man who seeks to come here is from the moral and social standpoint of such a character as to bid fair to add value to the community he should be heartily welcomed.
His standard of living should be such that he will not, by pressure of competition, lower the standard of living of our own wage-workers; for it must ever be a prime object of our legislation to keep high their standard of living.
It is our right and duty to consider his moral and social quality.
In dealing with this question it is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and to discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of that man's fitness for citizenship.
It should be made possible to inflict a sufficiently heavy penalty on any employer violating this law to deter him from taking the risk.
This ratio should be high enough to insure the coming hither of as good a class of aliens as possible.
Adequate means should be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies engaged in the passenger business to observe in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or solicit immigration to the United…
The laws now existing for the exclusion of undesirable immigrants should be strengthened.
The prime need is to keep out all immigrants who will not make good American citizens.
As I said in my last message to the Congress, we cannot have too much immigration of the right sort and we should have none whatever of the wrong sort.
These agents are distributed throughout Europe, and by the offer of all kinds of inducements they wheedle and cajole many immigrants, often against their best interest, to come here.
In other words, in the single year that has just elapsed there came to this country a greater number of people than came here during the one hundred and sixty-nine years of our Colonial life which intervened between the first landing at…
The question of immigration is of vital interest to this country.
It is a matter of unmixed satisfaction once more to call attention to the excellent work of the Pension Bureau; for the veterans of the civil war have a greater claim upon us than any other class of our citizens.
Even on the Pacific, where our ships have held their own better than on the Atlantic, our merchant flag is now threatened through the liberal aid bestowed by other Governments on their own steam lines.
It is not a good thing that American merchants and manufacturers should have to send their goods and letters to South America via Europe if they wish security and dispatch.
It cannot but be a source of regret and uneasiness to us that the lines of communication with our sister republics of South America should be chiefly under foreign control.
We should have ships of our own and seamen of our own to convey our goods to neutral markets, and in case of need to reinforce our battle line.
The National Government already does something in connection with the construction and maintenance of the great system of levees along the lower course of the Mississippi; in my judgment it should do much more.
Since the consolidation of all Government forest work in the National Forest Service there has been a rapid and notable gain in the usefulness of the forest reserves to the people and in public appreciation of their value.
It is probable that the present grazing value of the open public range is scarcely more than half what it once was or what it might easily be again under careful regulation.
While this work is being done, and until the lands are settled, the Government should take control of the open range, under reasonable regulations suited to local needs, following the general policy already in successful operation on the…
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