In our anxiety for the welfare and progress of the Philippines, may be that here and there we have gone too rapidly in giving them local self-government.
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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Such desertion of duty on our part would be a crime against humanity.
To leave the islands at this time would mean that they would fall into a welter of murderous anarchy.
History may safely be challenged to show a single instance in which a masterful race such as ours, having been forced by the exigencies of war to take possession of an alien land, has behaved to its inhabitants with the disinterested zeal…
We hope to do for them what has never before been done for any people of the tropics--to make them fit for self-government after the fashion of the really free nations.
We do not desire to do for the islanders merely what has elsewhere been done for tropic peoples by even the best foreign governments.
In dealing with the Philippine people we must show both patience and strength, forbearance and steadfast resolution.
What has taken us thirty generations to achieve, we cannot expect to have another race accomplish out of hand, especially when large portions of that race start very far behind the point which our ancestors had reached even thirty…
Our people are now successfully governing themselves, because for more than a thousand years they have been slowly fitting themselves, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, toward this end.
It is no light task for a nation to achieve the temperamental qualities without which the institutions of free government are but an empty mockery.
Already a greater measure of material prosperity and of governmental honesty and efficiency has been attained in the Philippines than ever before in their history.
We hope to make our administration of the islands honorable to our Nation by making it of the highest benefit to the Filipinos themselves; and as an earnest of what we intend to do, we point to what we have done.
Our earnest effort is to help these people upward along the stony and difficult path that leads to self-government.
All our legislation for the islands should be shaped with this end in view; the well-being of the average home-maker must afford the true test of the healthy development of the islands.
We do not wish a region of large estates tilled by cheap labor; we wish a healthy American community of men who themselves till the farms they own.
We are dealing with a new and momentous question, in the pregnant years while institutions are forming, and what we do will affect not only the present but future generations.
Laws so vitally affecting homes as those which control the water supply will only be effective when they have the sanction of the irrigators; reforms can only be final and satisfactory when they come through the enlightenment of the people…
The benefits which have followed the unaided development of the past justify the nation's aid and co-operation in the more difficult and important work yet to be accomplished.
Granting perpetual water rights to others than users, without compensation to the public, is open to all the objections which apply to giving away perpetual franchises to the public utilities of cities.
In irrigation this right should attach to the land reclaimed and be inseparable therefrom.
In the arid States the only right to water which should be recognized is that of use.
Laws founded upon conditions obtaining in humid regions, where water is too abundant to justify hoarding it, have no proper application in a dry country.
The recognition of such ownership, which has been permitted to grow up in the arid regions, should give way to a more enlightened and larger recognition of the rights of the public in the control and disposal of the public water supplies.
Whoever controls a stream practically controls the land it renders productive, and the doctrine of private ownership of water apart from land cannot prevail without causing enduring wrong.
Whatever the nation does for the extension of irrigation should harmonize with, and tend to improve, the condition of those now living on irrigated land.
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