The feeling that he was impetuous and impulsive was also due to the fact that in a sudden, seemingly unexpected crisis he would act with great rapidity. This happened when he had been for weeks, perhaps for months, considering what he should do if such a crisis arose. He always believe that one of the most important elements of success, whether in public or in private life, was to know what one meant to do under given circumstances. If he saw the possibility of perilous questions arising, it was his practice to think over carefully just how he would act under certain contingencies Many of the contingencies never arose. Now and then a contingency became an actuality, and then he was ready. He knew what he meant to do, he acted at once, and some critics considered him impetuous, impulsive, and, therefore, dangerous because they did not know that he had thought the question all out beforehand. Very many people, powerful elements in the community, regarded him at one time as a dangerous radical, bent upon overthrowing all the safe-guard of society and planning to tear out the foundations of an ordered liberty. As a matter of fact, what Theodore Roosevelt was trying to do was to strengthen American society and American Government by demonstrating to the American people that he was aiming at a larger economic equality and a more generous industrial opportunity for all men, and that any combination of capital or of business, which threatened the control of the Government by the people who made it, was to be curbed and resisted, just as he would have resisted an enemy who tried to take possession of the city of Washington. He had no hostility to a man because he had been successful in business or because he had accumulated a fortune. If the man had been honestly successful and used his fortune wisely and beneficently, he was regarded by Theodore Roosevelt as a good citizen. The vulgar hatred of wealth found no place in his heart. He had but one standard one test, and that was whether a man, rich or poor, was an honest man, a good citizen, and a good American. He tried men, whether they were men of "big business" or members of a labor union, by their deeds, and in no other way. The tyranny of anarchy and disorder, such as is now desolating Russia, was as hateful to him as any other tyranny, whether it came from an autocratic system like that of Germany or from the misuse of organized capital. Personally he believed in every man earning his own living, and he earned money and was glad to do so; but he had no desire or taste for making money, and he was entirely indifferent to it. The simplest of men in his own habits, the only thing he really would have liked to have done with ample wealth would have been to give freely to the many good objects which continually interested him.