The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1903-04-10
ROOSEVELT'S SIOUX FALLS SPEECH
Discusses Conditions and Needs Of the Men Engaged in Tling the Soil and
Producing the Nations Bread and Meat and Their Best
Customers the Wage Workers.

among our people. In my W life
time l have seen wonderful changes
brought about by this tree planting
mere in your own state and in the
states Immediately around it.
For Good Roads.
There are a number OF very i'm
portant questions, such Is that Of good
roads, with which the states alone
can deal, and where all the IL onal
government a do IS to cooperate
with them. The same is true of the
education of the American farmer. A
number of the states have themselves
started to help in this work and the
department of agriculture does an
immense amount which is in the prop
err sense of the word educational and
educational in the most practical way.
ut is therefore clearly true that a
great advance has been made in the
direction of finding ways by which the
government can help the farmer to
help himself-the only kind of help
which a self-respecting man will ac-
cept, or, l may add, which will in the
end do him any good. Much has been
done in these days and farm life and
farm processes continually change for
the better. The farmer himself still
retains, because of his surroundings
and the nature. of his work, to a pre-
eminent degree the qualities which
we like to think of as distinctly Amer
lean in considering our early history.
The man who tills his OWE farm,
whether on the prairie or in the wood
land, the man who grows what we eat
and the raw material which is work
ed up into what we wear, still exists
more nearly under the conditions
which obtained when the 'embattled
farmers of '76 made this country a
nation than is true of any others OF
our people.
Condition Of Labor.
But the wage-workers of our cit.
les, like the capitalists in our cities,
face totally changed conditions. The
development of machinery and the
extraordinary change in business con
ditions have rendered the employment
of capital and of persons in large ag
%gregations not merely profitable, but
often necessary for success, and have
specialized the labor OF the wage
worker at the same time that they
have brought great aggregations OF
wage-workers together. More ane
more in our great industrial centers
men have come to realize that they
cannot live al independently of one
another as in the old days was the
case everywhere and as is now the
case in the country districts.
"Of course, fundamentally each mar
will yet find that the chief factor ii
determining his success or failure IL
life is the sum of his own individual
his individual initiative. his individ
ual will and power; but he can bes
use that power ii for certain objects
he unites with his fellows. Much ca
be done by organization, combination
union among the wage-workers; final
ly something can be done by the di
rect action of the state. 1t is not pos
sible empirically to declare when tn
interference of the state should b.
deemed legitimate and when illegti
mate.
THE line of demarcation betwee,
unhealthy and overinterfernce and un
healthy lack OF regulation is not al
ways we'll defined and shifts with tn
change in our industrial needs. Mos
certainly we should never invoke tn
interference OF the state or nation un
less it is absolutely necessary, but l
IS equally true that when MID
OF it's necessity we hould not O.
academic grounds refuse it. Wis
factory laws, laws to forbid the EN-
ployment of child labor and to safe
guard the employees against the effect
of culpable negligence by the employ
err, are necessary, not merely in tn
interest OF the wageworker, but in tn
interest of the honest and human
employer, who should not be penalii
: ed for his honesty and humanity b
: being exposed to unchecked compe'
ition with an INSCRIPTIONS rival. ]
f is far more difficult to deal with tn
+ greed that works through cunnin
S than with the greed that work
i throluh u%i0lence But the effort t