Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| to enjoy the fruits of past toil, or whether they have yet their fortunes to make, and feel confident that they can swim in troubled waters,—for weaklings have small chance of forging to the front against the turbulent tide of our city life. The truth is that every man worth his salt has open to him in New York a career of boundless usefulness and interest. |
| As for the upper social, world, the fashionable world, it is much as it was when portrayed in the “Potiphar Papers,” save that modern society has shifted the shrine at which it pays comical but sincere homage from Paris to London. Perhaps it is rather better, for it is less provincial and a trifle more American. But a would-be upper class based mainly on wealth, in which it is the exception and not the rule for a man to be of any real account in the national life, whether as a politician, a literary man, or otherwise, is of necessity radically defective and of little moment. |
| Grim dangers confront us in the future, yet there is more ground to believe that we shall succeed than that we shall fail in overcoming them. Taking into account the enormous mass of immigrants, utterly unused to self-government of any kind, who have been thrust into our midst, and are even yet not assimilated, the wonder is not that universal suffrage has worked so badly, but that it has worked so well. We are better, not worse off, |