Theodore Roosevelt on the Role of the State in Its Citizen's Lives

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Theodore Roosevelt on the Role of the State in Its Citizen's Lives

Speech

Date: December 30, 1900

Source: Roosevelt, Theodore.The Strenuous Life. New York: Review of Reviews, 1904.

About the Author: Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) served as president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. A progressive reformer and strong nationalist, he delivered this address before members of the Young Men's Christian Association at Carnegie Hall in New York.

INTRODUCTION

President Theodore Roosevelt lived in an age of enormous political and business corruption. A Progressive reformer, he argued that Christian ethics could cure the ills of the nation. He promoted a nationalist vision that involved preserving order and advancing American culture. He encouraged young men to follow his example.

Roosevelt became president in 1901 upon the assassination of William McKinley (1843–1901). He soon became known as a trust buster because he attacked business monopolies, arguing that every businessman should have the same chance to get ahead. He sought to keep out the crooks and protect the competent, striking a balance between free enterprise and corporate responsibility.

Despite his reform credentials, Roosevelt was a conservative who spoke often about the virtues of government. He viewed public service as the highest calling, asserting that the United States needed a dynamic federal government to hold together the innovators and opportunists within its borders. Government would serve as a check on evil, a pervasive force throughout the world, according to the president. A devout member of the Dutch Reformed Church, he firmly believed in the existence of sin. He argued that people would use their strength to oppress others unless stopped by good men. Roosevelt believed that such good men needed to be sound in body as well as in mind to contribute to the national well-being.

The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) was founded in London in 1844 and brought to the United States in 1851. The middle-class Protestant men who began the organization sought to provide a buffer between young men away from home for the first time and the dangers of the city. Emphasizing the triangle of mind, body, and spirit, they aimed to build a Christian superman who would be sober, moral, and physically fit to face the perils of the modern age.

PRIMARY SOURCE

It is a peculiar pleasure to me to come before you tonight to greet you and to bear testimony to the great good that has been done by these Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations throughout the United States. More and more we are getting to recognize the law of combination. This is true of many phases in our industrial life, and it is equally true of the world of philanthropic effort. Nowhere is it, or will it ever be, possible to supplant individual effort, individual initiative; but in addition to this there must be work in combination. More and more this is recognized as true not only in charitable work proper, but in that best form of philanthropic endeavor where we all do good to ourselves by all joining together to do good to one another. This is exactly what is done in your associations.

It seems to me that there are several reasons why you are entitled to especial recognition from all who are interested in the betterment of our American social system. First and foremost, your organization recognizes the vital need of brotherhood, the most vital of all our needs here in this great Republic. The existence of a Young Men's or Young Women's Christian Association is certain proof that some people at least recognize in practical shape the identity of aspiration and interest, both in things material and in things higher, which must be widespread through the masses of our people if our national life is to attain full development. This spirit of brotherhood recognizes of necessity both the need of self-help and also the need of helping others in the only way which ever ultimately does great good, that is, of helping them to help themselves. Every man of us needs such help at some time or another, and each of us should be glad to stretch out his hand to a brother who stumbles. But while every man needs at times to be lifted up when he stumbles, no man can afford to let himself be carried, and it is worth no man's while to try thus to carry some one else. The man who lies down, who will not try to walk, has become a mere cumberer of the earth's surface.

These Associations of yours try to make men self-helpful and to help them when they are self-helpful. They do not try merely to carry them, to benefit them for the moment at the cost of their future undoing. This means that all in any way connected with them not merely retain but increase their self-respect. Any man who takes part in the work of such an organization is benefited to some extent and benefits the community to some extent—of course, always with the proviso that the organization is well managed and is run on a business basis, as well as with a philanthropic purpose.

The feeling of brotherhood is necessarily as remote from a patronizing spirit, on the one hand, as from a spirit of envy and malice, on the other. The best work for our uplifting must be done by ourselves, and yet with brotherly kindness for our neighbor. In such work, and therefore in the kind of work done by the Young Men's Christian Associations, we all stand on the self-respecting basis of mutual benefit and common effort. All of us who take part in any such work, in whatever measure, both receive and confer benefits.…

Besides developing this sense of brotherhood, the feeling which breeds respect both for one's self and for others, your Associations have a peculiar value in showing what can be done by acting in combination without aid from the State. While on the one hand it has become evident that under the conditions of modern life we can not allot the unlimited individualism which may work harm to the community, it is no less evident that the sphere of the State's action should be extended very cautiously, and so far as possible only where it will not crush out healthy individual initiative. Voluntary action by individuals in the form of associations of any kind for mutual betterment or mutual advantage often offers a way to avoid alike the dangers of State control and the dangers of excessive individualism. This is particularly true of efforts for that most important of all forms of betterment, moral betterment—the moral betterment which usually brings material betterment in its train.

It is only in this way, by all of us working together in the spirit of brotherhood, by each doing his part for the betterment of himself and of others, that it is possible for us to solve the tremendous problems with which as a nation we are now confronted. Our industrial life has become so complex, its rate of movement so very rapid, and the specialization and differentiation so intense that we find ourselves face to face with conditions that were practically unknown in this nation half a century ago. The power of the forces of evil have been greatly increased, and it is necessary for our self-preservation that we should similarly strengthen the forces for the good. We are all of us bound to work toward this end. No one of us can do everything, but each of us can do something, and if we work together the aggregate of these somethings will be very considerable.…

It ought not to be necessary for me to warn you against mere sentimentality, against the philanthropy and charity which are not merely insufficient but harmful. It is eminently desirable that we should none of us be hard-hearted, but it is no less desirable that we should not be soft-headed. I really do not know which quality is most productive of evil to mankind in the long run, hardness of heart or softness of head. Naked charity is not what we permanently want. There are of course certain classes, such as young children, widows with large families, or crippled or very aged people, or even strong men temporarily crushed by stunning misfortune, on whose behalf we may have to make a frank and direct appeal to charity, and who can be the recipients of it without any loss of self-respect. But taking us as a whole, taking the mass of Americans, we do not want charity, we do not want sentimentality; we merely want to learn how to act both individually and together in such fashion as to enable us to hold our own in the world, to do good to others according to the measure of our opportunities, and to receive good from others in ways which will not entail on our part any loss of self-respect.…

So far, what I have had to say has dealt mainly with our relations to one another in what may be called the service of the State. But the basis of good citizenship is the home. A man must be a good son, husband, and father, a woman a good daughter, wife, and mother, first and foremost. There must be no shirking of duties in big things or in little things. The man who will not work hard for his wife and his little ones, the woman who shrinks from bearing and rearing many healthy children, these have no place among the men and women who are striving upward and onward. Of course the family is the foundation of all things in the States. Sins against pure and healthy family life are those which of all others are sure in the end to be visited most heavily upon the nation in which they take place. We must beware, moreover, not merely of the great sins, but of the lesser ones which when taken together cause such an appalling aggregate of misery and wrong. The drunkard, the lewd liver, the coward, the liar, the dishonest man, the man who is brutal to or neglectful of parents, wife, or children—of all of these the shrift should be short when we speak of decent citizenship. Every ounce of effort for good in your Associations is part of the ceaseless war against the traits which produce such men. But in addition to condemning the grosser forms of evil we must not forget to condemn also the evils of bad temper, lack of gentleness, nagging and whining fretfulness, lack of consideration for others—the evils of selfishness in all its myriad forms. Each man or woman must remember his or her duty to all around, and especially to those closest and nearest, and such remembrance is the best possible preparation for doing duty for the State as a whole.

We ask that these Associations, and the men and women who take part in them, practice the Christian doctrines which are preached from every true pulpit. The Decalogue and the Golden Rule must stand as the foundation of every successful effort to better either our social or our political life. "Fear the Lord and walk in his ways" and "Love thy neighbor as thyself"—when we practice these two precepts, the reign of social and civic righteousness will be close at hand. Christianity teaches not only that each of us must so live as to save his own soul, but that each must also strive to do his whole duty by his neighbor. We can not live up to these teachings as we should; for in the presence of infinite might and infinite wisdom, the strength of the strongest man is but weakness, and the keenest of mortal eyes see but dimly. But each of us can at least strive, as light and strength are given him, toward the ideal. Effort along any one line will not suffice. We must not only be good, but strong. We must not only be high-minded, but brave-hearted. We must think loftily, and we must also work hard. It is not written in the Holy Book that we must merely be harmless as doves. It is also written that we must be wise as serpents. Craft unaccompanied by conscience makes the crafty man a social wild beast who preys on the community and must be hunted out of it. Gentleness and sweetness unbacked by strength and high resolve are almost impotent for good.

The true Christian is the true citizen, lofty of purpose, resolute in endeavor, ready for a hero's deeds, but never looking down on his task because it is cast in the day of small things; scornful of baseness, awake to his own duties as well as to his rights, following the higher law with reverence, and in this world doing all that in him lies, so that when death comes he may feel that mankind is in some degree better because he has lived.

SIGNIFICANCE

Theodore Roosevelt remains as controversial in the twenty-first century as he was during his lifetime. Some historians continue to view him as a perennial adolescent, proto-fascist, sheer opportunist, or a combination of all three. Others insist that he was a sophisticated conservative or a sincere and enlightened progressive. Virtually everyone agrees that Roosevelt was a fervent nationalist and a remarkable president who set the stage for much of the American foreign and domestic policies of the twentieth century.

A man of surpassing charm, extraordinary charisma, and broad intellectual interests, Roosevelt was a curious combination of realist and idealist, pragmatist and moral absolutist. In practice, his idealism and intellectualism were diluted by his love of power. As a young politician, he had once argued that the United States was engaged in a fateful struggle for markets, prestige, and power. As president, the more mature Roosevelt concluded that the nation's real interests lay in a stable world balance of power. He was the first president to understand and respond constructively to both the domestic and international changes that had been created by the industrial revolution.