Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
cry spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in securing, by speech,
editorial, book or pamphlet, the defense by misstatement of what they
have done; and yet when we correct their misstatements by telling the
truth, they declaim against us for breaking silence, lest "values be
unsettled!" They have hurt honest business men, honest working men,
honest farmers; and now they clamor against the truth being told.
The keynote of all these attacks upon the effort to secure honesty in
business and in politics, is expressed in a recent speech, in which the
speaker stated that prosperity had been checked by the effort for the
"moral regeneration of the business world," an effort which he denounced
as "unnatural, unwarranted, and injurious" and for which he stated the
panic was the penalty. The morality of such a plea is precisely as great
as if made on behalf of the men caught in a gambling establishment when
that gambling establishment is raided by the police. If such words mean
anything they mean that those whose sentiments they represent stand
against the effort to bring about a moral regeneration of business which
will prevent a repetition of the insurance, banking, and street railroad
scandals in New York; a repetition of the Chicago and Alton deal; a
repetition of the combination between certain professional politicians,
certain professional labor leaders and certain big financiers from the
disgrace of which San Francisco has just been rescued; a repetition of
the successful efforts by the Standard Oil people to crush out every
competitor, to overawe the common carriers, and to establish a monopoly
which treats the public with the contempt which the public deserves so
long as it permits men like the public men of whom I speak to represent
it in politics, men like the heads of colleges to whom I refer to
educate its youth. The outcry against stopping dishonest practices among
the very wealthy is precisely similar to the outcry raised against every
effort for cleanliness and decency in city government because, forsooth,
it will "hurt business." The same outcry is made against the Department
of Justice for prosecuting the heads of colossal corporations that is
made against the men who in San Francisco are prosecuting with impartial
severity the wrongdoers among business men, public officials, and labor
leaders alike. The principle is the same in the two cases. Just as
the blackmailer and the bribe giver stand on the same evil eminence
of infamy, so the man who makes an enormous fortune by corrupting
Legislatures and municipalities and fleecing his stockholders and the
public stands on a level with the creature who fattens on the blood
money of the gambling house, the saloon and the brothel. Moreover,
both kinds of corruption in the last analysis are far more intimately
connected than would at first sight appear; the wrong-doing is at bottom
the same. Corrupt business and corrupt politics act and react, with
ever increasing debasement, one on the other; the rebate-taker, the
franchise-trafficker, the manipulator of securities, the purveyor and
protector of vice, the black-mailing ward boss, the ballot box stuffer,
the demagogue, the mob leader, the hired bully and mankiller, all alike
work at the same web of corruption, and all alike should be abhorred by
honest men.
The "business" which is hurt by the movement for honesty is the kind of
business which, in the long run, it pays the country to have hurt. It
is the kind of business which has tended to make the very name "high
finance" a term of scandal to which all honest American men of business
should join in putting an end. One of the special pleaders for business
dishonesty, in a recent speech, in denouncing the Administration for
enforcing the law against the huge and corrupt corporations which
have defied the law, also denounced it for endeavoring to secure
a far-reaching law making employers liable for injuries to their
employees. It is meet and fit that the apologists for corrupt wealth
should oppose every effort to relieve weak and helpless people from
crushing misfortune brought upon them by injury in the business from
which they gain a bare livelihood and their employers fortunes. It is
hypocritical baseness to speak of a girl who works in a factory where
the dangerous machinery is unprotected as having the "right" freely
to contract to expose herself to dangers to life and limb. She has
no alternative but to suffer want or else to expose herself to such
dangers, and when she loses a hand or is otherwise maimed or disfigured
for life it is a moral wrong that the burden of the risk necessarily
incidental to the business should be placed with crushing weight upon
her weak shoulders and the man who has profited by her work escape
scot-free. This is what our opponents advocate, and it is proper that
they should advocate it, for it rounds out their advocacy of those most
dangerous members of the criminal class, the criminals of vast wealth,
the men who can afford best to pay for such championship in the press
and on the stump.
It is difficult to speak about the judges, for it behooves us all to
treat with the utmost respect the high office of judge; and our judges
as a whole are brave and upright men. But there is need that those who
go wrong should not be allowed to feel that there is no condemnation of
their wrongdoing. A judge who on the bench either truckles to the mob or
bows down before a corporation; or who, having left the bench to become
a corporation lawyer, seeks to aid his clients by denouncing as enemies
of property all those who seek to stop the abuses of the criminal rich;
such a man performs an even worse service to the body politic than the
Legislator or Executive who goes wrong. In no way can respect for the
courts be so quickly undermined as by teaching the public through the
action of a judge himself that there is reason for the loss of such
respect. The judge who by word or deed makes it plain that the corrupt
corporation, the law-defying corporation, the law-defying rich man,
has in him a sure and trustworthy ally, the judge who by misuse of the
process of injunction makes it plain that in him the wage-worker has a
determined and unscrupulous enemy, the judge who when he decides in an
employers' liability or a tenement house factory case shows that he has
neither sympathy for nor understanding of those fellow-citizens of his
who most need his sympathy and understanding; these judges work as much
evil as if they pandered to the mob, as if they shrank from sternly
repressing violence and disorder. The judge who does his full duty well
stands higher, and renders a better service to the people, than any
other public servant; he is entitled to greater respect; and if he is a
true servant of the people, if he is upright, wise and fearless, he will
unhesitatingly disregard even the wishes of the people if they conflict
with the eternal principles of right as against wrong. He must serve
the people; but he must serve his conscience first. All honor to such a
judge; and all honor cannot be rendered him if it is rendered equally
to his brethren who fall immeasurably below the high ideals for which he
stands. There should be a sharp discrimination against such judges. They
claim immunity from criticism, and the claim is heatedly advanced by men
and newspapers like those of whom I speak. Most certainly they can claim
immunity from untruthful criticism; and their champions, the newspapers
and the public men I have mentioned, exquisitely illustrate by their own
actions mendacious criticism in its most flagrant and iniquitous form.
But no servant of the people has a right to expect to be free from just
and honest criticism. It is the newspapers, and the public men whose
thoughts and deeds show them to be most alien to honesty and truth
who themselves loudly object to truthful and honest criticism of their
fellow-servants of the great moneyed interests.
We have no quarrel with the individuals, whether public men, lawyers
or editors, to whom I refer. These men derive their sole power from the
great, sinister offenders who stand behind them. They are but puppets
who move as the strings are pulled by those who control the enormous
masses of corporate wealth which if itself left uncontrolled threatens
dire evil to the Republic. It is not the puppets, but the strong,
cunning men and the mighty forces working for evil behind, and to a
certain extent through, the puppets, with whom we have to deal. We seek
to control law-defying wealth, in the first place to prevent its
doing evil, and in the next place to avoid the vindictive and dreadful
radicalism which if left uncontrolled it is certain in the end to
arouse. Sweeping attacks upon all property, upon all men of means,
without regard to whether they do well or ill, would sound the death
knell of the Republic; and such attacks become inevitable if decent
citizens permit rich men whose lives are corrupt and evil to domineer
in swollen pride, unchecked and unhindered, over the destinies of this
country. We act in no vindictive spirit, and we are no respecters of
persons. If a labor union does what is wrong, we oppose it as fearlessly
as we oppose a corporation that does wrong; and we stand with equal
stoutness for the rights of the man of wealth and for the rights of the
wage-workers; just as much so for one as for the other. We seek to stop
wrongdoing; and we desire to punish the wrongdoer only so far as is
necessary in order to achieve this end. We are the stanch upholders of
every honest man, whether business man or wage-worker.
I do not for a moment believe that our actions have brought on business
distress; so far as this is due to local and not world-wide causes,
and to the actions of any particular individuals, it is due to the
speculative folly and flagrant dishonesty of a few men of great
wealth, who now seek to shield themselves from the effects of their own
wrongdoings by ascribing its results to the actions of those who have
sought to put a stop to the wrongdoing. But if it were true that to
cut out rottenness from the body politic meant a momentary check to an
unhealthy seeming prosperity, I should not for one moment hesitate to
put the knife to the cancer. On behalf of all our people, on behalf no
less of the honest man of means than of the honest man who earns each
day's livelihood by that day's sweat of his brow, it is necessary to
insist upon honesty in business and politics alike, in all walks of
life, in big things and in little things; upon just and fair dealing
as between man and man. We are striving for the right in the spirit of
Abraham Lincoln when he said:
"Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge may
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.'
"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in."
Sincerely yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
HON. CHARLES J. BONAPARTE. Attorney-General.
CHAPTER XIII
SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE
By the time I became President I had grown to feel with deep intensity
of conviction that governmental agencies must find their justification
largely in the way in which they are used for the practical betterment
of living and working conditions among the mass of the people. I felt
that the fight was really for the abolition of privilege; and one of the