Address of Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, delivered at Boston, Mass., Saturday, April 27, 1912 — John Shaqi
Address of Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, delivered at Boston, Mass., Saturday, April 27, 1912Roosevelt, Theodore
History
Address of Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, delivered at Boston, Mass., Saturday, April 27, 1912
Roosevelt, Theodore
Politics, Practical -- United States; Speeches, addresses, etc.; United States -- Politics and government -- 1909-1913
But when I ask that the choppers, the plowmen, the fishers be given
the absolute, the real control over their Government: when I ask that
the farmers, the factory workers, the retail merchants, the young
professional men, the railroad men, all the average citizens, be given
the real control of this Government of theirs, be given the right to
nominate their own candidates, be given the right to supervise the
acts of all their servants――the minute I do that, I am told that I am
appealing to the momentary passion of the mob [laughter and applause],
that fishers and choppers and plowmen are all right in poetry but
when I try to put them into politics they become a mob cursed with
an inability to act except under the impulse of momentary passion.
[Laughter and applause.]
Now, friends, in my life, according to the strength that has been
given me, I have always striven measurably to realize every ideal I
have ever possessed, and I hold with deepest conviction that there is
nothing worse in any man than to profess a high ideal as a mere matter
of intellectual pleasure and in practice to make no effort to realize
that ideal. [Applause.] I hold that it is discreditable to us as a
people, discreditable to you of Massachusetts, if you praise Emerson’s
and Lowell’s lines in the abstract and fail to do your best to endeavor
actually to realize them in the present. [Applause.]
THE PEOPLE NO JUDGES.
All I am trying to do is to practically put into effect now in America,
in 1912, the principles which your great leaders in Massachusetts, your
great statesmen of the past, your great writers, your poets of the
past, preached 30 and 50 and 70 years ago. [Applause.] That is all that
I am trying to do.
And, friends, I now wish to put before you just what I mean by one of
my proposals which has attracted the most criticism, and the people
will catch up with it in the end.
In different parts of this Union, in different States, we have had very
different qualities of public service. Nowhere have the differences
been greater than in the judiciary.
MASSACHUSETTS JUDGES GOOD.
Here in Massachusetts you have had, I believe, a very unusually high
quality of service from your judges. [Applause.]
When I was President, one of the revolutionary things that I did, of
which you have heard so much, was, without any precedent――to put on the
Supreme Court of the Nation two judges from Massachusetts. [Applause.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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