The best use of the public grazing lands requires the careful examination and classification of these lands in order to give each settler land enough to support his family and no more.
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.
gutenberg.org
It would probably result on the one hand in enlarging the holdings of some of the great land owners, and on the other in needless suffering and failure on the part of a very considerable proportion of the bona fide settlers who give faith…
This is obviously true, but neither can a family be supported on 640 acres of much of the land to which it is proposed to apply the grazing homestead.
We cannot afford to substitute tenants for freeholders on the public domain.
This provision has excited active and powerful hostility, but the success of the law itself depends on the wise and firm enforcement of it.
Under that act the construction of great irrigation works has been proceeding rapidly and successfully, the lands reclaimed are eagerly taken up, and the prospect that the policy of National irrigation will accomplish all that was expected…
The creation of small irrigated farms under the Reclamation act is a powerful offset to the tendency of certain other laws to foster or permit monopoly of the land.
The iniquitous methods by which the monopolizing of the public lands is being brought about under the present laws are becoming more generally known, but the existing laws do not furnish effective remedies.
Recent developments have given new urgency to the need for such changes as will fit these laws to actual present conditions.
There are exceptions, notably in one or two branches of the service, but at no time in the Nation's history has the public service of the Nation taken as a whole stood on a higher plane than now, alike as regards honesty and as regards…
Yet in dwelling on such misdeeds it is unjust not to add that they are altogether exceptional, and that on the whole the employes of the Government render upright and faithful service to the people.
His crime is a crime against every honest man in the Nation, for it is a crime against the whole body politic.
So far as in my power see each and every such wrongdoer shall be relentlessly hunted down; in no instance in the past has he been spared; in no instance in the future shall he be spared.
It is impossible, no matter how much care is used, to prevent the occasional appointment to the public service of a man who when tempted proves unfaithful; but every means should be provided to detect and every effort made to punish the…
Such officer or employe owes the duty to the United States to guard carefully and not to divulge or in any manner use, prematurely, information which is accessible to the officer or employe by reason of his official position.
Legislation should also be enacted to cover explicitly, unequivocally, and beyond question breach of trust in the shape of prematurely divulging official secrets by an officer or employe of the United States, and to provide a suitable…
The delays of the criminal law, no less than of the civil, now amount to a very great evil.
The criminal law of the United States stands in urgent need of revision.
In my last message I asked the attention of the Congress to the urgent need of action to make our criminal law more effective; and I most earnestly request that you pay heed to the report of the Attorney General on this subject.
We need additional seamen; we need a large store of reserve guns; we need sufficient money for ample target practice, ample practice of every kind at sea.
If the officers and men are not thoroughly skilled in, and have not been thoroughly trained to, their duties, it would be far better to keep the ships in port during hostilities than to send them against a formidable opponent, for the…
To put a new and untrained crew upon the most powerful battleship and send it out to meet a formidable enemy is not only to invite, but to insure, disaster and disgrace.
No fighting ship of the first class should ever be laid up save for necessary repairs, and her crew should be kept constantly exercised on the high seas, so that she may stand at the highest point of perfection.
Modern warships are most formidable mechanisms when well handled, but they are utterly useless when not well handled, and they cannot be handled at all without long and careful training.
But it is, of course, true that the man behind the gun, the man in the engine room, and the man in the conning tower, considered not only individually, but especially with regard to the way in which they work together, are even more…
Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt
