The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)Roosevelt, Theodore
General
The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)
Roosevelt, Theodore
United States -- Colonial question; United States -- Politics and government
It is easy to say what we ought to do, but it is hard to do it; and yet
no scheme can be devised which will save us from the need of doing just
this hard work. Not merely must each of us strive to do his duty; in
addition it is imperatively necessary also to establish a strong and
intelligent public opinion which will require each to do his duty. If
any man here falls short he should not only feel ashamed of himself,
but in some way he ought also to be made conscious of the condemnation
of his fellows, and this no matter what form his shortcoming takes.
Doing our duty is, of course, incumbent on every one of us alike; yet
the heaviest blame for dereliction should fall on the man who sins
against the light, the man to whom much has been given, and from whom,
therefore, we have a right to expect much in return. We should hold to
a peculiarly rigid accountability those men who in public life, or as
editors of great papers, or as owners of vast fortunes, or as leaders
and molders of opinion in the pulpit, or on the platform, or at the
bar, are guilty of wrongdoing, no matter what form that wrongdoing may
take.
In addition, however, to the problems which, under protean shapes,
are yet fundamentally the same for all nations and for all times,
there are others which especially need our attention, because they are
the especial productions of our present industrial civilization. The
tremendous industrial development of the nineteenth century has not
only conferred great benefits upon us of the twentieth, but it has
also exposed us to grave dangers. This highly complex movement has had
many sides, some good and some bad, and has produced an absolutely
novel set of phenomena. To secure from them the best results will tax
to the utmost the resources of the statesman, the economist, and the
social reformer. There has been an immense relative growth of urban
population, and, in consequence, an immense growth of the body of
wages-workers, together with an accumulation of enormous fortunes which
more and more tend to express their power through great corporations
that are themselves guided by some master mind of the business world.
As a result, we are confronted by a formidable series of perplexing
problems, with which it is absolutely necessary to deal, and yet with
which it is not merely useless, but in the highest degree unwise and
dangerous to deal, save with wisdom, insight, and self-restraint.
There are certain truths which are so commonplace as to be axiomatic,
and yet so important that we can not keep them too vividly before our
minds. The true welfare of the nation is indissolubly bound up with
the welfare of the farmer and the wage-worker—of the man who tills
the soil, and of the mechanic, the handicraftsman, the laborer. If we
can ensure the prosperity of these two classes we need not trouble
ourselves about the prosperity of the rest, for that will follow as a
matter of course.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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