One who attempts to estimate and evaluate those eight years of multifarious activity will find it difficult to separate the transient and spectacular from the permanent and fundamental. In the foreground stand the interference in the coal strike, the acquisition of the Panama Canal strip, voluminous messages discussing every aspect of our complex social and political life, vigorous and spirited interference with state elections, as in the case of Mr. Hearst's campaign in New York, and in city politics, as in the case of Mr. Burton's contest in Cleveland, Ohio, the pressing of the idea of conserving natural resources upon the public mind, acrimonious disputes with private citizens like Mr. Harriman, and, finally, the closing days of bitter hostilities with Congress over the Tennessee Coal and Iron affair and appropriations for special detectives to be at executive disposal. _Mr. Roosevelt's Doctrines_ During those years the country was much torn with the scandals arising from investigations, such as the life insurance inquest in New York, which revealed grave lapses from the paths of rectitude on the part of men high in public esteem, and gross and vulgar use of money in campaigns. No little of the discredit connected with these affairs fell upon the Republican party, not because its methods were shown to be worse in general than those of the Democrats, but because it happened to be in power. The great task of counteracting this discontent fell upon Mr. Roosevelt, who smote with many a message the money changers in the temple of his own party, and convinced a large portion of the country that he had not only driven them out but had refused all association with them. Mr. Roosevelt was thus quick to catch the prevailing public temper. "It makes not a particle of difference," he said in 1907, "whether these crimes are committed by a capitalist or by a laborer, by a leading banker or manufacturer or railroad man, or by a leading representative of a labor union. Swindling in stocks, corrupting legislatures, making fortunes by the inflation of securities, by wrecking railroads, by destroying competitors through rebates,--these forms of wrongdoing in the capitalist are far more infamous than any ordinary form of embezzlement or forgery.... The business man who condones such conduct stands on a level with the labor man who deliberately supports a corrupt demagogue and agitator." * * * * * Any one who takes the trouble to examine with care Mr. Roosevelt's messages and other public utterances during the period of his administration will discover the elements of many of his policies which later took more precise form.