Theodore Roosevelt: An AutobiographyRoosevelt, Theodore
History
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
Roosevelt, Theodore
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
economic system in such a fashion as to substitute the ideal of justice
towards all for the ideal of kindly charity from the favored few to the
possibly grateful many.
Some of the men foremost in the struggle for Civil Service Reform have
taken a position of honorable leadership in the battle for those other
and more vital reforms. But many of them promptly abandoned the field of
effort for decency when the battle took the form, not of a fight against
the petty grafting of small bosses and small politicians--a vitally
necessary battle, be it remembered--but of a fight against the great
intrenched powers of privilege, a fight to secure justice through the
law for ordinary men and women, instead of leaving them to suffer cruel
injustice either because the law failed to protect them or because it
was twisted from its legitimate purposes into a means for oppressing
them.
One of the reasons why the boss so often keeps his hold, especially in
municipal matters, is, or at least has been in the past, because so
many of the men who claim to be reformers have been blind to the need
of working in human fashion for social and industrial betterment. Such
words as "boss" and "machine" now imply evil, but both the implication
the words carry and the definition of the words themselves are somewhat
vague. A leader is necessary; but his opponents always call him a boss.
An organization is necessary; but the men in opposition always call it a
machine. Nevertheless, there is a real and deep distinction between the
leader and the boss, between organizations and machines. A political
leader who fights openly for principles, and who keeps his position of
leadership by stirring the consciences and convincing the intellects of
his followers, so that they have confidence in him and will follow him
because they can achieve greater results under him than under any one
else, is doing work which is indispensable in a democracy. The boss, on
the other hand, is a man who does not gain his power by open means, but
by secret means, and usually by corrupt means. Some of the worst and
most powerful bosses in our political history either held no public
office or else some unimportant public office. They made no appeal
either to intellect or conscience. Their work was done behind closed
doors, and consisted chiefly in the use of that greed which gives in
order that in return it may get. A boss of this kind can pull wires in
conventions, can manipulate members of the Legislature, can control
the giving or withholding of office, and serves as the intermediary for
bringing together the powers of corrupt politics and corrupt business.
If he is at one end of the social scale, he may through his agents
traffic in the most brutal forms of vice and give protection to the
purveyors of shame and sin in return for money bribes. If at the other
end of the scale, he may be the means of securing favors from high
public officials, legislative or executive, to great industrial
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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