American ideals, and other essays, social and politicalRoosevelt, Theodore
General
American ideals, and other essays, social and political
Roosevelt, Theodore
National characteristics, American; United States -- Politics and government; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
There are, however, plenty of wrong-doers besides those who commit
the overt act. Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who
sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a
more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible
to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing
a fortune, and putting his fortune only to the basest uses--whether
these uses be to speculate in stocks and wreck railroads himself, or
to allow his son to lead a life of foolish and expensive idleness
and gross debauchery, or to purchase some scoundrel of high social
position, foreign or native, for his daughter. Such a man is only
the more dangerous if he occasionally does some deed like founding a
college or endowing a church, which makes those good people who are
also foolish forget his real iniquity. These men are equally careless
of the workingmen, whom they oppress, and of the state, whose existence
they imperil. There are not very many of them, but there is a very
great number of men who approach more or less closely to the type,
and, just in so far as they do so approach, they are curses to the
country. The man who is content to let politics go from bad to worse,
jesting at the corruption of politicians, the man who is content to
see the maladministration of justice without an immediate and resolute
effort to reform it, is shirking his duty and is preparing the way for
infinite woe in the future. Hard, brutal indifference to the right,
and an equally brutal shortsightedness as to the inevitable results of
corruption and injustice, are baleful beyond measure; and yet they are
characteristic of a great many Americans who think themselves perfectly
respectable, and who are considered thriving, prosperous men by their
easy-going fellow-citizens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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