Theodore Roosevelt Quotes
I think that perhaps if I looked through the sweatshops myself, we might be in a condition to put things on a new basis, just as … in the police department after you and I began our midnight tours.
When TR was the NYC Police Commissioner, Riis had given him midnight tours of the precincts so Roosevelt could see for himself what the police were and were not doing. When he became Governor, his labor inspectors never reported the terrible sweatshop conditions that the newspapers were writing about. So TR asked Riis to arrange some personal “visits”. The two of them alone would show up at a sweatshop in the middle of the day and the governor would simply introduce himself to the owner, who dared not prohibit the Governor from coming in and then asking questions of workers and managers. Even in modern times that would not happen in a large state. The Governor then realized that the state labor inspectors were not doing their jobs and covering up the problems. Major changes took place.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919, 26th President of the United States (Republican, NY), Request of Jacob Riis, May 5, 1900
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Virtually every advance for the working class in England (and the other countries including America) was labeled “socialism” by the conservative economic factions of the time. However, socialists were strong advocates of all these economic reforms and even in the 19th century their impact was recognized.
In 1902 there was a major coal and railroad labor crisis. The owners and operators refused to negotiate or bargain with labor: This quotation is very famous because it is an iconic picture of the views and attitudes of the large industiralists at the turn of the 20th Century. More than opposing labor unions, they actually believed that God had selected them to run the economic and business affairs of the country if not the world. It was their Christian values and paternalism that the workers should look to in order to determine the rights and priviliges of the working man or woman. This upper class attitude was one of the major reasons that class warfare broke into the open. Ironically, there was not much difference between the attidudes of the industiral leaders and the notions of fudalism.
the Bolshevik Communists of Russia Zenzinov was often a critic of the Bolsheviks.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr., often referred to as Teddy or his initials T. R., was an American statesman, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer, who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He previously served as 33rd governor of New York from 1899 to 1900 and the 25th vice president of the United States from March to September 1901. Roosevelt emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for anti-trust and Progressive policies.
