Teddy Roosevelt

The Post-Office Department has now undertaken to remove the abuses so far as is possible by a stricter application of the law; and it should be sustained in its effort.

But much of the matter which enjoys the privileged rate is wholly outside of the intent of the law, and has secured admission only through an evasion of its requirements or through lax construction.

If the pound rate of postage, which produces the large loss thus entailed, and which was fixed by the Congress with the purpose of encouraging the dissemination of public information, were limited to the legitimate newspapers and…

It is just that the great agricultural population should share in the improvement of the service.

Among recent postal advances the success of rural free delivery wherever established has been so marked, and actual experience has made its benefits so plain, that the demand for its extension is general and urgent.

Perhaps the most characteristic educational movement of the past fifty years is that which has created the modern public library and developed it into broad and active service.

The Exposition was peculiarly in harmony with the trend of our public policy, because it represented an effort to bring into closer touch all the peoples of the Western Hemisphere, and give them an increasing sense of unity.

Both from the industrial and the artistic standpoint this Exposition has been in a high degree creditable and useful, not merely to Buffalo but to the United States.

It is one of three or four great landmarks in our history--the great turning points in our development.

It definitely decided that we were to become a great continental republic, by far the foremost power in the Western Hemisphere.

In dealing with the aboriginal races few things are more important than to preserve them from the terrible physical and moral degradation resulting from the liquor traffic.

The Indian should be treated as an individual--like the white man.

It promotes beggary, perpetuates pauperism, and stifles industry.

We should now break up the tribal funds, doing for them what allotment does for the tribal lands; that is, they should be divided into individual holdings.

The General Allotment Act is a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass.

In my judgment the time has arrived when we should definitely make up our minds to recognize the Indian as an individual and not as a member of a tribe.

The merit system is simply one method of securing honest and efficient administration of the Government; and in the long run the sole justification of any type of government lies in its proving itself both honest and efficient.

All that we ask from the public servant in the Philippines or Puerto Rico is that he reflect honor on his country by the way in which he makes that country's rule a benefit to the peoples who have come under it.

The navy-yards and postal service illustrate, probably better than any other branches of the Government, the great gain in economy, efficiency, and honesty due to the enforcement of this principle.

Wherever the conditions have permitted the application of the merit system in its fullest and widest sense, the gain to the Government has been immense.

It simply means that in clerical and other positions where the duties are entirely non-political, all applicants should have a fair field and no favor, each standing on his merits as he is able to show them by practical test.

The merit system of making appointments is in its essence as democratic and American as the common school system itself.

Moreover, they not only left us a united Nation, but they left us also as a heritage the memory of the mighty deeds by which the Nation was kept united.

But for their steadfast prowess in the greatest crisis of our history, all our annals would be meaningless, and our great experiment in popular freedom and self-government a gloomy failure.

They did the one deed which if left undone would have meant that all else in our history went for nothing.