The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-10-01
WHAT ROOSEVELT THINKS.

WHAT ROOSEVELT THINKS,
In the two preceding issues of The
Progressive Farmer we have given
biographical sketches of Theodore
Roosevelt, and it may be that our
readers now have a clearer idea of
his career than of his opinions and
ideals. Upon these much light is
shed by his published works, of
which there are several.
X X X = X
For one thing, we think Mr.. Roose-
welt is free from sectional prejudice.
His eloquent tribute to Lee published
in our last issue indicates this, but
he makes it much palmer in a letter
written to a citizen of Georgia last
June, in which he said:
81 am extremely proud of the fact
that one of my uncles was an adj
miral in the Confederate Navy and
that another fired the last gun fred
aboard the Alabama. I think the
time has now come when we a all
of us be proud of the valor shown on
both sides in the Civil War"
This is a worthy sentiment, and it
is re-echoed in his american
IDEALS" in which he says, speaking
of the Civil War:
eve are the richer for each grim
campaign, for each hard fought bat
tie. We are the richer for valor dis
played alike by those who fought so
valiantly for the right, and by those
who, NO less valiantly, fought for
wheat they deemed the right"
y X
And if no one can accuse him of
sectional prejudice, neither is it easy
as yet TO find reasons for thinking
him a worshipper of wealth. On
the other hand, he breaches the old
fashioned doctrine that tits better to
deserve suocess than merely to
secure it.
"There is not in all the world, " he
says, ga more ignoble character than
the 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 him
self, or TO allow his son to lead a life
of foolish and expensive idleness and
gross debauohery, or to purchase
some scoundrel of high social posi-
ton, foreign or native, for his daugh.
ter. 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 fool
ish forget his real iniquity."
K X X X X X
AS a matter of fact, if the new
President will only practice continu-
ously the excellent doctrine taught
in his books, we shall have no cause
for complaint. In public service, he
maintains the two indispensable
qualities are, morality and efficiency.
And not of morality in it's
sense does he speak, but that broader
morality which recognizes the fact
that sit is an even graver ofense to
sin against the common wealth than
to sin against an individual" This
truth he emphasizes strongly in this
sentence:
"The man who debauches our pub
lie life, whether by malversation of
funds in Office, by the actual bribery
of voters or of Legislators, or by the
corrupt Use of the offices as spoils
wherewith to reward the unworthy
and the vicious for their noxious
and interested activity in the baser
walks of political life,-this man is a
greater foe to our we'll being as a
nation than is even the defaulting
cashier of a bank, or the betrayer of
a private trust"
Mr.. Roosevelt believes it the duty
! of every citizen to take an active