Teddy Roosevelt

The well-being of the wage-worker is a prime consideration of our entire policy of economic legislation.

Our first duty is to see that the protection granted by the tariff in every case where it is needed is maintained, and that reciprocity be sought for so far as it can safely be done without injury to our home industries.

Yet it is not only possible, but eminently desirable, to combine with the stability of our economic system a supplementary system of reciprocal benefit and obligation with other nations.

Our experience in the past has shown that sweeping revisions of the tariff are apt to produce conditions closely approaching panic in the business world.

Doubt, apprehension, uncertainty are exactly what we most wish to avoid in the interest of our commercial and material well-being.

Nothing could be more unwise than to disturb the business interests of the country by any general tariff change at this time.

Both the educational and economic tests in a wise immigration law should be designed to protect and elevate the general body politic and social.

This would stop the influx of cheap labor, and the resulting competition which gives rise to so much of bitterness in American industrial life; and it would dry up the springs of the pestilential social conditions in our great cities…

There should be proper proof of personal capacity to earn an American living and enough money to insure a decent start under American conditions.

Finally, all persons should be excluded who are below a certain standard of economic fitness to enter our industrial field as competitors with American labor.

But it would do what is also in point, that is, tend to decrease the sum of ignorance, so potent in producing the envy, suspicion, malignant passion, and hatred of order, out of which anarchistic sentiment inevitably springs.

The second object of a proper immigration law ought to be to secure by a careful and not merely perfunctory educational test some intelligent capacity to appreciate American institutions and act sanely as American citizens.

To be permanently effective, aid must always take the form of helping a man to help himself; and we can all best help ourselves by joining together in the work that is of common interest to all.

When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for which we strive.

Finally, there must also in many cases be action by the Government in order to safeguard the rights and interests of all.

Very great good has been and will be accomplished by associations or unions of wage-workers, when managed with forethought, and when they combine insistence upon their own rights with law-abiding respect for the rights of others.

This is the great secret of our success in competition with the labor of foreign countries.

Moreover, they take a keen pride in what they are doing; so that, independent of the reward, they wish to turn out a perfect job.

American wage-workers work with their heads as well as their hands.

The Government should forbid all night work for women and children, as well as excessive overtime.

In all industries carried on directly or indirectly for the United States Government women and children should be protected from excessive hours of labor, from night work, and from work under unsanitary conditions.

The National Government should demand the highest quality of service from its employees; and in return it should be a good employer.

Every effort of legislator and administrator should be bent to secure the permanency of this condition of things and its improvement wherever possible.

It is therefore a matter for hearty congratulation that on the whole wages are higher to-day in the United States than ever before in our history, and far higher than in any other country.

If the farmer and the wage-worker are well off, it is absolutely certain that all others will be well off too.