Part 1

Chapter 13,829 wordsPublic domain

Outlook Editorials

Theodore Roosevelt

New York The Outlook Company 1909

The first eleven editorials of Theodore Roosevelt, published in The Outlook from March sixth to July seventeenth, nineteen hundred and nine

Contents

PAGE

Why I Believe in the Kind of American Journalism for Which The Outlook Stands 1

A Judicial Experience 11

A Scientific Expedition 23

Where We Cannot Work With Socialists 29

Where We Can Work With Socialists 51

Quack Cure-Alls for the Body Politic 65

The Japanese Question 71

Tolstoy 81

A Southerner’s View of the South 95

The Thraldom of Names 101

Give Me Neither Poverty Nor Riches 121

_By Way of Welcome_

_From The Outlook of March 6, 1909_

_It would be a singular affectation to introduce to the readers of The Outlook its new Associate Editor, Theodore Roosevelt. He is the most widely known representative of the present world movement towards industrial democracy. It is needless here to describe that movement, so fully has it been described by editorials in The Outlook, and by the public addresses and state papers of the retiring President of the United States. Unconsciously co-operating, we have pursued a common end, which in the future we shall pursue in conscious co-operation. Our object is to bring the industrial institutions of democracy into harmony with its political and educational institutions. Our resolve is that the money power in America, as its political and educational power, shall come from the people, be exercised for the people, and be controlled by the people. Our motto is, Special privilege for none, equality of opportunity for all. In the name of the editorial and publishing departments of The Outlook, I frankly acknowledge our gratification that Theodore Roosevelt has chosen this journal to be the medium for his published utterances on social, economic and political subjects, and in their name I welcome him as an Associate to its editorial staff._

_LYMAN ABBOTT._

Why I Believe in the Kind of American Journalism for Which The Outlook Stands

I first came into close contact with The Outlook when Governor of New York, ten years ago, and I speedily grew to have a peculiar feeling of respect and regard for Dr. Abbott and his associates. We did not always agree, and as our convictions were strong our disagreements were sometimes positive; but experience taught me that, in the first place, Dr. Abbott and his associates always conscientiously strove to be fair, and that, in the second place, they not only desired to tell the truth, but made a serious endeavor to find out the facts. I found, moreover, that they combined to a peculiar degree a number of qualities, each of them good, but rarely found in combination.

Every owner, editor, or reporter of a conscientiously and ably conducted newspaper or periodical is an asset of real value to the whole community. It would be difficult to overestimate the amount of good which can be done by the men responsible for such a publication――responsible for its editorial columns, responsible for its news columns, responsible for its general policy. We have many newspapers and periodicals, big and little, of this kind. But we also have many that are emphatically not of this kind.

During the last few years it has become lamentably evident that certain daily newspapers, certain periodicals, are owned or controlled by men of vast wealth who have gained their wealth in evil fashion, who desire to stifle or twist the honest expression of public opinion, and who find an instrument fit for their purpose in the guided and purchased mendacity of those who edit and write for such papers and periodicals. This style of sordid evil does not even constitute a temptation to The Outlook; no influence of any kind could make the men who control The Outlook so much as consider the question of abandonment of duty; and they hold as their first duty inflexible adherence to the elementary virtues of entire truth, entire courage, entire honesty.

Moreover, they are as far removed as the poles from the apostles of that hideous yellow journalism which makes a cult of the mendacious, the sensational, and the inane, and which, throughout its wide but vapid field, does as much to vulgarize and degrade the popular taste, to weaken the popular character, and to dull the edge of the popular conscience, as any influence under which the country can suffer. These men sneer at the very idea of paying heed to the dictates of a sound morality; as one of their number has cynically put it, they are concerned merely with selling the public whatever the public will buy――a theory of conduct which would justify the existence of every keeper of an opium den, of every foul creature who ministers to the vices of mankind. Here, again, it is perhaps not especially to the credit of Dr. Abbott and his associates that they have avoided this pit; fortunately, they are so constituted that it is a simple impossibility for them to fall into it.

But they do deserve very great credit for avoiding another type of temptation which has much fascination for men of cultivation and of refined taste, and which is quite as fatal to their usefulness as indulgence in yellow journalism. A newspaper or periodical which avoids vulgar sensationalism, which takes and cultivates an interest in serious matters, and things literary, artistic, and scientific――which, in short, appeals to people of taste, intelligence, and cultivation――may nevertheless do them grave harm, and be within its own rather narrow limits an element of serious mischief; for it may habitually and consistently practice a malign and slanderous untruthfulness which, though more refined than, is at least as immoral as, the screaming sensationalism of any representative of the journalism which it affects to despise. A cultivated man of good intelligence who has acquired the knack of saying bitter things, but who lacks the robustness which will enable him to feel at ease among strong men of action, is apt, if his nature has in it anything of meanness or untruthfulness, to strive for a reputation in what is to him the easiest way. He can find no work which is easier――and less worth doing――than to sit in cloistered aloofness from the men who wage the real and important struggles of life and to endeavor, by an unceasing output of slander in regard to them, to bolster up his own uneasy desire to be considered superior to them. Now a paper edited by men of this stamp does not have much popular influence, and therefore is less detrimental to the people at large than yellow journalism; but it may, to the extent of its power, exert a very real influence for evil, by the way in which it teaches young men of good education, whose talents should be at their country’s service, that decent and upright public men are as properly subjects of foul attack as the most debased corruptionist; that efficiency and wickedness are interchangeable; and that the correct attitude to adopt, in facing the giant problems of our great and troubled time, is one of sneering and supercilious untruthfulness.

Dr. Abbott and his associates have avoided this pitfall also. With them cultivation and good taste have not implied weakness. Demand for righteousness in others has not led to abandonment of truth on their own part.

The Outlook has stood for righteousness, but it has never been self-righteous. It stands for the things of the spirit, and yet it remembers the needs of the body. It serves lofty ideals, it believes in a lofty idealism. But it knows that common sense is essential above all other qualities to the idealist; for an idealist without common sense, without the capacity to work in hard, practical fashion for actual results, is merely a boat that is all sails, and with neither ballast nor rudder. The Outlook’s belief in gentleness and tenderness, in the spirit of brotherly love, never blinds it to the necessity of cultivating those hardy, rugged, and vigorous qualities for the want of which in the individual as in the Nation, no gentleness, no cultivation, and, above all, no gift of money-making and no self-indulgence in the soft ease of living, can in any way atone.

The Outlook has shown a fine scorn of untruth in every form, of unfairness and injustice to any man or any cause. It is not given to humanity never to err; but The Outlook makes a resolute effort to find out what the facts actually are before passing judgment. With it earnestness and strength of conviction go hand in hand with a sincere desire to see and to state the other man’s point of view. It believes that things in this world can be made better, but it does not indorse quixotic movements which would merely leave things worse. It champions the rights of the many. It desires in every way to represent, to guide aright, and to uphold the interests of those whom Abraham Lincoln called the plain people. It feels a peculiar desire to do all that can be done for the poor and the oppressed, and to help upward those struggling to better themselves. But it has no sympathy with moral weakness or sentimentality. All that it can do it does and will do for the cause of labor; but it will in no shape or way condone violence or disorder. It stands for the rights of property, and therefore against the abuses of property. It believes in a wise individualism, and in encouragement of individual initiative; and therefore all the more it believes in using the collective force of the whole people to do what but for the use of that collective force must be left undone.

I am glad to be associated with Dr. Abbott and the group of men and women he has gathered around him, because they practice what they preach; and because they preach the things that are most necessary to the salvation of this people. It is their earnest belief that every man must earn enough to support himself and those dependent upon him; but that when once this has been accomplished, money immediately becomes secondary to many other things. In this matter The Outlook puts its principles into practice. It strives in proper ways to make money. If it did not make money it could not be run at all. But making money is not the prime reason for its existence. The first question asked when any matter of policy arises, so far as The Outlook is concerned, is whether or not a given course is right, and should be followed because it is in the real and lasting interest of the Nation. If this question is answered in the affirmative, then The Outlook follows the course indicated with all the courage, earnestness, and ability that are at its disposal.

A Judicial Experience

A year after leaving Harvard I ran for the New York Legislature and was elected. In the Legislature I was soon brought in contact with various advocates of what is known as labor legislation; and I eyed both them and their schemes with great distrust. When in Harvard I had studied what were then considered the orthodox political economists; and after leaving college the older men whom I met were for the most part lawyers or business men of wealth who quite sincerely took the ordinary wealthy business man’s view of labor matters. Moreover, in the Legislature, most of the men who professed a loud and ardent interest in the welfare of the laboring man were exceedingly unattractive persons, who, to put it mildly, did not impress one as being either sincere or honest. Many of the labor bills which were introduced were foolish, and were urged in a transparently demagogic spirit, and the labor leaders who came to Albany to argue for them eyed me with a suspicion which I cordially reciprocated. Most of them, I am now inclined to think, were by no means of the best type; and I, in my turn, because of my surroundings both in the classroom and in the social and business world, was alert to pick flaws in anything concerning a labor union, and possessed a self-satisfied narrowness in approaching all labor questions which must have been highly exasperating to my opponents.

My college training had biased me against all governmental schemes for the betterment of the social and industrial conditions of laborers, or for the control of corporations. The education which I afterwards received in these matters, and which completely changed my views, was gained partly from books, but more from actual experience in governmental work, and from a constantly widening and more intimate knowledge of the real life of different bodies of our people. My first step in this education began when, after leaving college, I joined, and endeavored to make myself count in, my local Republican association――instead of joining some parlor gathering of well-meaning dilettante reformers.

The labor unions had been demanding legislation to stop the manufacture of cigars in tenement-houses, and during my second term in Albany the Assembly appointed a committee to look into the conditions. My belief is that the committee was appointed with the hope that it would not recommend any change in the law, and that I was put on because, on account of my education and social surroundings, it was supposed that I would naturally take this view; and I certainly expected to take it. One of my colleagues was a then well-known sporting Tammany politician who afterwards abandoned politics and became a professional racing man. There were many points on which our theories of ethics were as far asunder as the poles; but I soon discovered that there were other matters, and some of these of fundamental importance, on which we thought alike, and our association ended in mutual respect and good will. Soon after the investigation started I told him that I was a good deal shocked at what I had seen, and was wavering in my preconceived opinions. He answered by saying that, as far as he personally was concerned, he was pledged in advance against recommending any change in the law, but that he had known that I was a free agent and had all along believed that when I looked into the matter for myself I would be a very ardent advocate of the change. He was quite right in his supposition. The investigation convinced me beyond shadow of doubt that to permit the manufacture of cigars in tenement-houses, which necessarily meant their manufacture not only by the men but by the women and children of the poverty-stricken immigrants who were engaged in the task, was an evil thing from every standpoint, social, industrial, and hygienic. I accordingly cordially supported the bill; which made a large number of my friends regard me as erratic and dangerous, or else as influenced by demagogic motives. The bill was badly drawn. No lawyer of any note had been consulted; there was no one to pay such a lawyer. When it passed both houses, the then Governor, Grover Cleveland, appointed a day for a hearing, and the labor unions asked me to appear. Appear we did, several good counsel being against us, while on our side there were, besides myself, merely five or six representatives of the cigar-makers’ union, all of them foreigners――battered-looking men, with whom the battle of life had evidently gone hard. As this was long before I had established any real relations with, or had any real understanding of, the unions, while they felt that I was a crank, influenced by incomprehensible motives, we worked on entirely independent lines, neither side feeling altogether comfortable in the relationship. However, the main argument――and indeed almost the only argument――for the bill was made by me. I answered various questions which the Governor put to me. He afterwards called me up and told me that, though he felt very doubtful, yet that, in view of the state of facts I had set forth, he would sign the bill.

The employers and tenement-house owners immediately contested the constitutionality of the act, and after the usual long delays the highest State court finally pronounced the measure invalid. The cigar-makers were poor, and the great majority of them were ignorant foreigners. They had no money and no special influence even in the world of labor. They could not employ counsel either to draw their bill well in the first place, or to present their case to the best advantage when it was before the courts. The great mass of respectable, well-to-do people were nervously sensitive to attacks on what they considered the rights of property, and regarded as an infringement on these rights any effort to correct the abuses of property. The judges, as was quite natural, shared the feelings of the classes from which they were drawn, and with which they associated. The decision went against the dwellers in the tenement-houses. Anything like an effective reformation of tenement-house conditions was thereby deferred for fifteen or twenty years, and during that time men, women, and children were guaranteed their “liberty” to fester in sodden misery.

The judges invoked a technical construction of the Constitution in order to declare invalid a law deliberately enacted by the legislative body; a law which I firmly believe it was entirely in the province of the Legislature to pass. Every consideration of public morals and public weal demanded that it should be declared valid. At the present day few courts in any State of the Union would make such a decision as was then made; yet the judges making it were learned in the law, and according to their own lights were upright and honorable men. But they were men without any sympathetic understanding or knowledge of the needs and conditions of life of the great mass of their fellow-countrymen. If those judges had understood “how the other half lived,” if they had possessed a working knowledge of tenement-houses and factories, of tenement-house dwellers and factory workers, and of the lives that were lived where the tenement-house and the factory were one and the same, I am absolutely certain that they would have rendered no such decision as was rendered. They knew the life of the well-to-do, both the business life and the home life. They knew nothing of the lives of those who were not well-to-do. It was this lack of knowledge and the attendant lack of sympathetic understanding that formed the real barrier between the judges and a wise judgment.

My reason for relating this anecdote is because from that day to this I have felt an ever-growing conviction of the need of having on the bench men who, in addition to being learned in the law and upright, shall possess a broad understanding of and sympathy with their countrymen as a whole, so that the questions of humanity and of social justice shall not be considered by them as wholly inferior to the defense of vested rights or the upholding of liberty of contract. A hair-splitting refinement in decisions may result in as much damage to the community as if the judge were actually corrupt. Freedom of contract should be permitted only so far as is compatible with the best interests of the community; and when vested rights become intrenched wrongs, they should be overturned. I do not for one moment believe that the mass of our judges are actuated by any but worthy motives. Nevertheless, I do believe that they often signally fail to protect the laboring man and the laboring man’s widow and children in their just rights, and that heartbreaking and pitiful injustice too often results therefrom; and this primarily because our judges lack either the opportunity or the power thoroughly to understand the working man’s and working woman’s position and vital needs.

There are many judges, from the Supreme Court of the Nation down to the district bench in each State, who do possess this sympathy and understanding, in addition to uprightness, trained ability, broad intelligence, and entire fearlessness in the face of wrong, whether committed by capitalist or by laboring men; such judges are the best and most useful of all our public servants; public opinion should uphold them as clearly as it condemns their short-sighted and narrow-minded brethren.

A Scientific Expedition

I am about to go to Africa as the head of the Smithsonian expedition. It is a scientific expedition. We shall collect birds and mammals for the National Museum at Washington, and nothing will be shot unless for food, or for preservation as a specimen, or unless, of course, the animal is of a noxious kind. There will be no wanton destruction whatever.

I very earnestly hope that no representative of any newspaper or magazine will try to accompany me or to interview me during any portion of my trip. Until I actually get to the wilderness my trip will be precisely like any other conventional trip on a steamboat or railway. It will afford nothing to write about, and will afford no excuse or warrant for any one sending to any newspaper a line in reference thereto. After I reach the wilderness of course no one outside of my own party will be with me, and if any one pretends to be with me or pretends to write as to what I do, his statements should be accepted as on their face not merely false but ludicrous. Any statement purporting to have been made by me, or attributed to me, which may be sent to newspapers, should be accepted as certainly false and as calling for no denial from me. So far as possible I shall avoid seeing my representative of the press, and shall not knowingly have any conversation on any subject whatever with any representative of the press beyond exchanging the ordinary civilities or courtesies. I am a private citizen, and I am entitled to enjoy the privacy that should be the private citizen’s right. My trip will have no public bearing of any kind or description. It is undertaken for the National Museum at Washington, and is simply a collecting trip for the Museum. It will be extremely distasteful to me and of no possible benefit to any human being to try to report or exploit the trip, or to send any one with me, or to have any one try to meet me or see me with a view to such reporting or exploitation. Let me repeat that while I am on steamer or railway there will be nothing whatever to report; that when I leave the railway for the wilderness no persons will have any knowledge which will enable them to report anything, and that any report is to be accepted as presumably false.

Where We Cannot Work With Socialists